Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
A
Modern Revival
Of
Ancient Wisdom
by
Alvin
Boyd Kuhn
Searchable
Full Text Version
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
PREFACE
Since this work was designed to be one of a series of
studies in American
religions, the treatment of the subject was consciously
limited to those aspects
of Theosophy which are in some manner distinctively related
to
restriction has been difficult to enforce for the reason
that, though officially
born here, Theosophy has never since its inception had its
headquarters on this
continent. The springs of the movement have emanated from
foreign sources and
influences. Its prime inspiration has come from ancient
Oriental cultures.
conditions of her native milieu. The main events in American
Theosophic history
have been mostly repercussions of events transpiring in
English, Continental, or
Indian Theosophy. It was thus virtually impossible to
segregate American
Theosophy from its connections with foreign leadership. But
the attempt to do so
has made it necessary to give meagre treatment to some of
the major currents of
world-wide Theosophic development. The book does not purport
to be a complete
history of Theosophy, but it is an attempt to present a
unified picture of the
movement in its larger aspects. No effort has been made to
weigh the truth or
falsity of Theosophic principles, but an effort has been
made to understand
their significance in relation to the historical situation
and psychological
disposition of those who have adopted it.
The author wises to express his obligation to several
persons without whose
assistance the enterprise would have been more onerous and
less successful. His
thanks are due in largest measure to Professor Roy F.
Mitchell of
University, and to Mrs. Mitchell, for placing at his
disposal much of their time
and of their wide knowledge of Theosophical material; to Mr.
L. W. Rogers,
President of the American Theosophical Society,
co-operation in the matter of the questionnaire, and to the
many members of the
Society who took pains to reply to the questions; to Mr.
John Garrigues, of the
United Lodge of Theosophists,
of Theosophic information, and to several of the ladies at
the U.L.T. Reading
Room for library assistance; to Professor Louis H. Gray, of
for technical criticism in Sanskrit terminology; to Mr.
Arthur E. Christy, of
philosophy; and to Professor Herbert W. Schneider, of
his painstaking criticism of the study throughout.
A. B. K.
September, 1930.3
CONTENTS
------
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THEOSOPHY, AN ANCIENT
TRADITION
..4
II. THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND OF
THEOSOPHY
..12
III. HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND PSYCHIC
CAREER
..25
IV. FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY
..50
V.
VI. THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR
LETTERS
..83
VII. STORM, WRECK, AND
REBUILDING
..100
VIII. THE SECRET DOCTRINE
..110
IX. EVOLUTION, REBIRTH, AND
KARMA
..131
X. ESOTERIC WISDOM AND PHYSICAL
SCIENCE
..142
XI. THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL
PRACTICE
.149
XII. LATER THEOSOPHICAL
HISTORY
..170
XIII. SOME FACTS AND
FIGURES
..190
FOOTNOTES
.198
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.222
INDEX
.237.4
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER I THEOSOPHY
In the mind of the general public Theosophy is classed with
Spiritualism, New
Thought, Unity and Christian Science, as one of the modern
cults. It needs but a
slight acquaintance with the facts in the case to reveal
that Theosophy is
amenable to this classification only in the most superficial
sense. Though the
Theosophical Society is recent, theosophy, in the sense of
an esoteric
philosophic mystic system of religious thought, must be
ranked as one of the
most ancient traditions. It is not a mere cult, in the sense
of being the
expression of a quite specialized form of devotion,
practice, or theory,
propagated by a small group. It is a summation and synthesis
of many cults of
all times. It is as broad and universal a motif, let us say,
as mysticism. It is
one of the most permanent phases of religion, and as such it
has welled up again
and again in the life of mankind. It is that "wisdom of
the divine" which has
been in the world practically continuously since ancient
times. The movement of
today is but another periodical recurrence of a phenomenon
which has marked the
course of history from classical antiquity. Not always
visible in outward
organization-indeed never formally organized as Theosophy
under that name until
now-the thread of theosophic teaching and temperament can be
traced in almost
unbroken course from ancient times to the present. It has
often been
subterranean, inasmuch as esotericism and secrecy have been
essential elements
of its very constitution. The modern presentation of
theosophy differs from all
the past ones chiefly in that it has lifted the veil that
cloaked its teachings
in mystery, and offered alleged secrets freely to the world.
Theosophists tell
us that before the launching of the latest "drive"
to promulgate Theosophy in
the world, the councils of the Great White Brotherhood of
Adepts, or Mahatmas,
long debated whether the times were ripe for the free
propagation of the secret
Gnosis; whether the modern world, with its Western dominance
and with the
prevalence of materialistic standards, could appropriate the
sacred knowledge
without the risk of serious misuse of high spiritual forces,
which might be
diverted into selfish channels. We are told that in these
councils it was the
majority opinion that broadcasting the Ancient Wisdom over
the Occidental areas
would be a veritable casting of pearls before swine; yet two
of the Mahatmas
settled the question by undertaking to assume all karmic
debts for the move, to
take the responsibility for all possible disturbances and
ill effects.
If we look at the matter through Theosophic eyes, we are led
to believe that
when in the fall of 1875 Madame Blavatsky, Col. H. S.
Olcott, and Mr. W. Q.
Judge took out the charter for the Theosophical Society in
was witnessing a really major event in human history. Not
only did it signify
that one more of the many recurrent waves of esoteric
cultism was launched but
that this time practically the whole body of occult lore,
which had been so
sedulously guarded in mystery schools, brotherhoods, secret
societies, religious
orders, and other varieties of organization, was finally to
be given to the.5
world en pleine lumiθre! At last the lid of antiquity's
treasure chest would be
lifted and the contents exposed to public gaze. There might
even be found
therein the solution to the riddle of the Sphynx! The great
Secret Doctrine was
to be taught openly;
To understand the periodical recurrence of the theosophic
tendency in history it
is necessary to note two cardinal features of the Theosophic
theory of
development. The first is that progress in religion,
philosophy, science, or art
is not a direct advance, but in advance in cyclical swirls.
When you view
progress in small sections, it may appear to be a
development in a straight
line; but if your gaze takes in the whole course of history,
you will see the
outline of a quite different method of progress. You will
not see uninterrupted
unfolding of human life, but advances and retreats, plunges
and recessions.
Spring does not emerge from winter by a steady rise of
temperature, but by
successive rushes of heat, each carrying the season a bit
ahead. Movement in
nature is cyclical and periodic. History progresses through
the rise and fall of
nations. The true symbol of progress is the helix, motion
round and round, but
tending upward at each swirl. But we must have large
perspectives if we are to
see the gyrations of the helix.
The application of this interpretation of progress to
philosophy and religion is
this: the evolution of ideas apparently repeats itself at
intervals time after
time, a closed circuit of theories running through the same
succession at many
points in history. Scholars have discerned this fact in
regard to the various
types of government: monarchy working over into oligarchy,
which shifts to
democracy, out of which monarchy arises again. The round has
also been observed
in the domain of philosophy, where development starts with
revelation and
proceeds through rationalism to empiricism, and, in
revulsion from that, swings
back to authority or mystic revelation once more. Hegel's
theory that progress
was not in a straight line but in cycles formed by the
manifestation of thesis,
antithesis, and then synthesis, which in turn becomes the
ground of a new
thesis, is but a variation of this general theme.
Theosophists, then, regard their movement as but the
renaissance of the esoteric
and occult aspect of human thought in this particular swing
of the spiral.
The second aspect of the occult theory of development is a
method of
interpretation which claims to furnish a key to the
understanding of religious
history. Briefly, the theory is that religions never evolve;
they always
degenerate. Contrary to the assumptions of comparative
mythology, they do not
originate in crude primitive feelings or ideas, and then
transform themselves
slowly into loftier and purer ones. They begin lofty and
pure, and deteriorate
into crasser forms. They come forth in the glow of
spirituality and living power
and later pass into empty forms and lifeless practices. From
the might of the
spirit they contract into the materialism of the letter. No
religion can rise
above its source, can surpass its founder; and the more
exalted the founder and
his message, the more certainly is degeneration to be looked
for. There is
always gradual change in the direction of obscuration and
loss of primal vision,
initial force. Religions tend constantly to wane, and need
repeated revivals and
reformations. Nowhere is it possible to discern anything
remotely like steady
growth in spiritual unfolding.
It is the occult theory that what we find when we search the
many religions of
the earth is but the fragments, the dissociated and
distorted units of what were
once profound and coherent systems. It is difficult to trace
in the isolated
remnants the contour of the original structure. But it is
this completed system
which the Theosophist seeks to reconstruct from the
scattered remnants..6
Religion, then, is a phase of human life which is alleged to
operate on a
principle exactly opposite to evolution, and theosophy
believes this key makes
it intelligible. Religions never claim to have evolved from
human society; they
claim to be gifts to humanity. They come to man with the
seal of some divine
authority and the stamp of supreme perfection. Not only are
they born above the
world, but they are brought to the world by the embodied
divinity of a great
Messenger, a Savior, a World-Teacher, a Prophet, a Sage, a
Son of God. These
bring their own credentials in the form of a divine life.
Their words and works
bespeak the glory that earth can not engender.
The two phases of theosophic explanation can now be linked
into a unified
principle. Religions come periodically; and they are given
to men from high
sources, by supermen. The theory of growth from crude
beginnings to spirituality
tacitly assumes that man is alone in the universe and left
entirely to his own
devices; that he must learn everything for himself from
experience, which
somehow enlarges his faculties and quickens them for higher
conceptions. This
view, says occultism, does unnatural violence to the
fundamental economy of the
universe, wrenching humanity out of its proper setting and
relationship in an
order of harmony and fitness. Humankind is made to be the
sole manipulator of
intelligence, the favored beneficiary of evolution, and as
such is severed from
its natural connection with the rest of the cosmic scheme.
So small and poor a
view does pitiable injustice to the wealth of the cosmic
resources. Bruno,
Copernicus, and modern science have taught us that man is
not the darling of
creation, nor the only child in the cosmic family, the
pampered ward of the
gods. Far from it; he is one among the order of beings,
occupying his proper
place in relation to vaster hierarchies than he has
knowledge of, above and
below him.1
What is the character of that relationship? It is, says the
esoteric teaching,
that of guardian and ward; of a young race in the tutelage
of an older; of
infant humanity being taught by more highly evolved beings,
whose intelligence
is to that of early man as an adept's to a tyro's. It is the
relationship of
children to parents or guardians. Throughout our history we
have been the wards
of an elder race, or at least of the elder brothers of our
own race. The members
of a former evolutionary school have turned back often, like
the guardians in
Plato's cave allegory, to instruct us in vital knowledge.
The wisdom of the
ages, the knowledge of the very Ancient of Days, has at
times been handed down
to us. The human family has produced some advanced Sages,
Seers, Adepts,
Christs, and these have cared for the less-advanced classes,
and have from time
to time given out a body of deeper wisdom than man's own.
Theosophy claims that
it is the traditional memory of these noble characters,
their lives and
messages, which has left the ancient field strewn with the
legends of its Gods,
Kings, Magi, Rishis, Avatars and its great semi-divine
heroes. Such wisdom and
knowledge as they could wisely and safely impart they have
handed down, either
coming themselves to earth from more ethereal realms, or
commissioning competent
representatives. And thus the world has periodically been
given the boon of a
new religion and a new stimulus from the earthly presence of
a savior regarded
as divine. And always the gospel contained milk for the
babes and meat for grown
men. There was both an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine.
The former was
broadcast among the masses, and did its proper and salutary
work for them; the
latter, however, was imparted only to the fit and
disciplined initiates in
secret organizations. Much real truth was hidden behind the
veil of allegory;
myth and symbol were employed. This aggregate of precious
knowledge, this
innermost heart of the secret teaching of the gods to
mankind, is, needless to
say, the Ancient Wisdom-is Theosophy. Or at least Theosophy
claims the key to.7
all this body of wisdom. It has always been in the world,
but never publicly
promulgated until now.
To trace the currents of esoteric influence in ancient
religious literature
would be the work of volumes. Theosophic or kindred
doctrines are to be found in
a large number of the world's sacred books or bibles. The
lore of
Philosophy, not less than religion, bears the stamp of
theosophical ideology.
Traces of the occult doctrine permeate most of the thought
systems of the past.
All histories of philosophy in the western world begin, with
or without brief
apology to the venerable systems of the Orient, with Thales
of Miletus and the
early Greek thinkers of about the sixth century B.C. In the
dim background stand
Homer and Hesiod and Pindar and the myths of the Olympian
pantheon. Contemporary
religious faiths, too, such as the cult of Pythagoreanism,2
and the Orphic and
Eleusinian Mysteries, influenced philosophical speculation.
It needs no extraordinary erudition to trace the stream of
esoteric teaching
through the field of Greek philosophy. What is really
surprising is that the
world of modern scholarship should have so long assumed that
Greek speculation
developed without reference to the wide-spread religious cult
systems which
transfused the thought of the near-Eastern nations.
Esotericism was an ingrained
characteristic of the Oriental mind and
contagion than could
that practically all of early Greek philosophy dealt with
material presented by
the Dionysiac and Orphic Mysteries and later by the
Pythagorean revisions of
these.3
Thales' fragments contain Theosophical ideas in his
identification of the physis
with the soul of the universe, and in his affirmation that
"the materiality of
physis is supersensible." Thales thought that this
physis or natural world was
"full of gods."4 Both these conceptions of the
impersonal and the personal
physis, the latter a reasoning substance approaching Nous,
came out of the
continuum of the group soul, as a vehicle of magic power.5
Man was believed to
stand in a sympathetic relation to this nature or physis,
and the deepening of
his sympathetic attitude was supposed to give him nothing
less than magical
control over its elements.
Prominent among the Orphic tenets was that of reincarnation,
possibly a
transference to man of the annual rebirth in nature. Worship
of heavenly bodies
as aiding periodical harvests found a place here also.6 The
conception of the
wheel of Dike and Moira, the allotted flow and apportionment
in time as well as
place, of all things, nature and man together, was
underlying in the ancient
Greek mind. Persian occult ideas may have influenced the
Orphic systems.7
Anaximander added to the scientific doctrines of Thales the
idea of compensatory
retribution for the transgression of Moira's bounds which
suggests Karma. The
sum of Heraclitus' teaching is the One Soul of the universe,
in ever-running
cycles of expression-"Fire8 lives the death of air, air
lives the death of fire;
earth lives the death of water, water lives the death of
earth."9 And interwoven
with it is a sort of justice which resembles karmic force.10
Dionysiac influence brought the theme of reincarnation
prominently to the fore
in metaphysical thinking.11
Socrates, in the Phaedo, speaks of "the ancient
doctrine that souls pass out of
this world to the other, and there exist, and then come back
hither from the.8
dead, and are born again." In Hesiod's Works and Days
there is the image of the
Wheel of Life. In the mystical tradition there was prominent
the wide-spread
notion of a fall of higher forms of life into the human
sphere of limitation and
misery. The Orphics definitely taught that the soul of man
fell from the stars
into the prison of this earthly body, sinking from the upper
regions of fire and
light into the misty darkness of this dismal vale. The fall
is ascribed to some
original sin, which entailed expulsion from the purity and
perfection of divine
existence and had to be expiated by life on earth and by
purgation in the nether
world.
The philosophies of Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato came
directly out of the
Pythagorean movement.13 Aristotle described Empedocles'
poems as "Esoteric," and
it is thought that Parmenides' poems were similarly so.
Parmenides' theory that
the earth is the plane of life outermost, most remotely
descended from God, is
re-echoed in theosophic schematism. Also his idea-"The
downward fall of life
from the heavenly fires is countered by an upward impulse
which 'sends the soul
back from the seen to the unseen'"-completes the
Theosophic picture of outgoing
and return. Parmenides "was really the 'associate' of a
Pythagorean, Ameinias,
son of Diochartas, a poor but noble man, to whom he
afterwards built a shrine,
as to a hero."14 "Strabo describes Parmenides and
Zeno as Pythagoreans."15
Cornford's comment on the philosophy of Empedocles leaves
little doubt as to its
origin in the Mysteries. 16 Strife causes the fall, love
brings the return.
Empedocles was a member of a Pythagorean society or school,
for Diogenes tells
us that he and Plato were expelled from the organization for
having revealed the
secret teachings.17
Of Pythagoras as a Theosophic type of philosopher there is
no need to speak at
any length. What is known of Pythagoreanism strongly
resembles Theosophy.
As to Socrates, it is interesting to note that Cornford's
argument "points to
the conclusion that Socrates was more familiar with
Pythagorean ideas than has
commonly been supposed."18 Socrates gave utterance to
many Pythagorean
sentiments and he was associated with members of the
Pythagorean community at
Phlious, near
R. D. Hicks comments on Plato's "imaginative sympathy
with the whole mass of
floating legend, myth and dogma, of a partly religious,
partly ethical
character, which found a wide, but not universal acceptance,
at an early time in
the Orphic and Pythagorean associations and
brotherhoods."19
"The Platonic myths afford ample evidence that Plato
was perfectly familiar with
all the leading features of this strange creed. The divine
origin of the soul,
its fall from bliss and the society of the gods, its long
pilgrimage of penance
through hundreds of generations, its task of purification
from earthly
pollution, its reincarnation in successive bodies, its
upward and downward
progress, and the law of retribution for all offences . .
."20
There is evidence pointing to the fact that Plato was quite familiar
with the
Mystery teachings, if not actually an initiate.21 In the
Phaedrus he says:
". . . being initiated into those Mysteries which it is
lawful to call the most
blessed of all Mysteries . . . we were freed from the
molestation of evils which
otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise in
consequence of this
divine initiation, we become spectators of entire, simple,
immovable and blessed
visions resident in the pure light."22.9
And his immersion in the prevalent esoteric attitude is
hinted at in another
passage:
"You say that, in my former discourse, I have not
sufficiently explained to you
the nature of the First. I purposely spoke enigmatically,
for in case the tablet
should have happened with any accident, either by land or
sea, a person, without
some previous knowledge of the subject, might not be able to
understand its
contents."23
Aristotle left the esoteric tradition, and went in the
direction of naturalism
and empiricism. Yet in him too there are many points of
distinctly esoteric
ideology. His distinction between the vegetative animal soul
and the rational
soul, the latter alone surviving while the former perished;
his dualism of
heavenly and terrestrial life; his belief that the heavenly
bodies were great
living beings among the hierarchies; and his theory that
development is the
passing of potentiality over into actualization, are all
items of Theosophic
belief.
Greek philosophy is said to have ended with Neo-Platonism-which
is one of
history's greatest waves of the esoteric tendency. It would
be a long task to
detail the theosophic ideas of the great Plotinus. He,
Origen and Herrennius
were pupils of Ammonius Saccas, whose teachings they
promised never to reveal,
as being occult. Plotinus' own teachings were given only to
initiated circles of
students.24 Proclus25 gives astonishing corroboration to a
fragment of
Theosophic doctrine in any excerpt quoted in Isis Unveiled:
"After death, the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger
in the aerial (astral)
form till it is entirely purified from all angry and
voluptuous passions . . .
then doth it put off by a second dying the aerial body as it
did the earthly
one. Whereupon the ancients say that there is a celestial
body always joined
with the soul, and which is immortal, luminous and
star-like."26
The esotericist feels that the evidence, a meagre portion of
which has been thus
cursorily submitted, is highly indicative that beneath the
surface of ancient
pagan civilization there were undercurrents of sacred
wisdom, esoteric
traditions of high knowledge, descended from revered
sources, and really
cherished in secret.
Presumably the Christian religion itself drew many of its
basic concepts
directly or indirectly from esoteric sources. It was born
amid the various cults
and faiths that then occupied the field of the Alexandrian
East and the Roman
Empire, and it was unable to escape the influences emanating
from these sources.
Its immediate predecessors were the Mystery-Religions, the
Jewish faith, and the
syncretistic blend of these with Syrian Orientalism and
Greek philosophy.
Judaism was itself deeply tinctured with Hellenistic and
oriental influences.
The Mystery cults were more or less esoteric; Judaism had
received a highly
allegorical formulation at the hands of Philo; the Hermetic
Literature was
similar to Theosophy; the Syrian faiths were saturated with
the strain of
"Chaldean" occultism; and Greek rationalism had
yielded that final mysticism
which culminated in Plotinus. Christianity was indebted to
many of these sources
and many scholars believe that it triumphed only because it
was the most
successful syncretism of many diverse elements. Numerous
streams of esoteric
doctrine contributed to Christianity; we can merely hint at
the large body of
evidence available on this point.
Christianity grew up in the milieu of the Mysteries, and
those early Fathers who
formulated the body of Christian doctrine did not step
drastically outside the.10
traditions of the prevalent faiths. Their work was rather an
incorporation of
some new elements into the accepted systems of the time. In
some cases, as in
Egyptian city were at the same time connected with the
Mystery cult of Serapis,
as many in
the most direct and prominent product of the two systems is
to be seen in St.
Paul, about whose intimate relation to the Mysteries several
volumes have been
written. Much of his language so strikingly suggests his
close contact with
Mystery formulae that it is a moot question whether or not
he was actually an
Initiate.28 At all events many are of the opinion that he
must have been
powerfully influenced by the cult teachings and practices.29
He mentions some
psychic experiences of his own, which are cited as savoring
strongly of the
character of the mystical exercises taught in the
Mysteries.30
When in the third and fourth centuries the Church Fathers
began the task of
shaping a body of doctrine for the new movement, the same
theosophic tendencies
pressed upon them from every side. Clement and Origen
brought many phases of
theosophic doctrine to prominence, a fact which tended later
to exclude their
writings from the canon. And when Augustine drew up the
dogmatic schematism of
the new religion, he was tremendously swayed by the work of
the Neo-Platonist
Plotinus, who, along with Ammonius Saccas, Numenius,
Porphyry, and Proclus, had
been a member of one or several of the Mystery bodies.31
The presence of powerful currents of Neo-Platonic idealism
in the early church
is attested by the effects upon it of Manichaeism,
Gnosticism and the
heresy, which tendencies had to be exterminated before
Christianity definitely
took its course of orthodox development. Occult writers32
have indicated the
forces at work in the formative period of the church's dogma
which eradicated
the theory of reincarnation and other aspects of esoteric
knowledge from the
orthodox canons. The point remains true, nevertheless, that
Christianity took
its rise in an atmosphere saturated with ideas resembling
those of Theosophy.
Theosophy, the Gnosis, having been to a large extant
rejected from Catholic
theology, nevertheless did not disappear from history. It
possessed an
unquenchable vitality and made its way through more or less
submerged channels
down the centuries. Movements, sects, and individuals that
embodied its
cherished principles could be enumerated at great length. A
list would include
Paulicians, the Bogomiles, the Bulgars, the Paterenes, the
Comacines, the
Cathari; Albigensians, and pietists; Joachim of Floris,
Roger Bacon, Robert
Bradwardine, Raymond Lully; the Alchemists, the Fire
Philosophers; Paracelsus,
B. Figulus; the Friends of God, led by Nicholas of Basle;
L'Homme de Cuir, in
in the Tarot; the great Aldus' Academy at
esoteric meanings in the literature of the Troubadours, and
in such writings as
The Romance of the Rose, the Holy Grail legends and the
Arthurian Cycle, if read
in an esoteric sense; Gower's Confessio Amantis, Spencer's
Faλrie Queen, the
works of Dietrich of Berne, Wayland Smith, the Peredur
Stories, and the
Mabinogian compilations. German pietism expressed
fundamentally Theosophic ideas
through Eckhardt, Tauler, Suso, and Jacob Boehme. The names
of such figures as
Count Rakowczi, Cagliostro, Count St. Germain, and Francis
Bacon have been
linked with the secret orders. In fact there was hardly a
period when the ghosts
of occult wisdom did not hover in the background of European
thought.
Sometimes its predominant manifestation was mystically
religious; again it was
cosmological and philosophical; never did it quite lose its
attachment to the
conceptions of science, which was at times reduced nearly to
magic. And it is.11
upon the implications of this scientific interest that the
occult theorist bases
his claim that science, along with religion and philosophy,
has sprung in the
beginning from esoteric knowledge. Not overlooking the
oldest scientific lore to
be found in the sacred books of the East, our attention is
called to the
astronomical science of the "Chaldeans"; the
similar knowledge among the
Egyptians, such, for instance, as led them to construct the
Pyramids on lines
conformable to sidereal measurements and movements; the reputed
knowledge of the
precession of the equinoxes among the Persian Magi and the
"Chaldeans"; the
later work of the scientists among the Alexandrian savants,
which had so
important a bearing upon the direction of the nascent
science in the minds of
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and
Robert Grosseteste, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and Jerome
Cardano in incipient
empiricism. It has always been assumed that the strange
mixture of true science
and grotesque magic found, for instance, in the work of
Roger Bacon, justifies
the implication that the concern with magic operated as a
hindrance to the
development of science. It should not be forgotten that the
stimulus to
scientific discovery sprang from the presuppositions
embodied in magical theory.
It is now beyond dispute that the magnificent achievements
of Copernicus,
Kepler, and Galileo were actuated by their brooding over the
significance of the
Pythagorean theories of number and harmony. Both science and
magic aim, each in
its special modus, at the control of nature. Through the
gateway of electricity,
says theosophy, science has been admitted, part way at
least, into the inner
sanctum of nature's dynamic heart. Magic has sought an entry
to the same citadel
by another road.
The Theosophist, then, believes, on the strength of evidence
only a fragment of
which has been touched upon here, that esotericism has been
weaving its web of
influence, powerful even if subtle and unseen, throughout
the religions,
philosophies, and sciences of the world. It makes little
difference what names
have been attached from time to time to this esoteric
tradition; and certainly
no attempt is made here to prove an underlying unity or
continuity in all this
"wisdom literature." Suffice it to point out that
in all ages there have been
movements analogous to modern Theosophy, and that the modern
cult regards itself
as merely a regular revelation in the periodic resurgence of
an ancient
learning..12
------
CHAPTER II THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
An outline of the circumstances which may be said to
constitute the background
for the American development of Theosophy should begin with
the mass of strange
phenomena which took place, and were widely reported, in
connection with the
religious revivals from 1740 through the Civil War period. A
veritable epidemic
of what were known as the "barks" and the
"jerks" swept over the land. They were
most frequent in evangelical meetings, but also became
common outside. The
phenomena, such as speaking in strange tongues, a condition
of trance and swoon
frequently attendant upon conversion, occasional
illumination and ecstasy,
resembling medieval mystic sainthood, and the apparently
miraculous reformation
of many criminals and drunkards. These phenomena impressed
the general mind with
the sense of a higher source of power that might be invoked
in behalf of human
interests.
During this period, too, several mathematical prodigies were
publicly exhibited
in the performance of quite unaccountable calculations,
giving instantaneously
the correct results of complicated manipulations of
numbers.1 From about 1820,
rumors were beginning to be heard of exceptional psychic
powers possessed by the
Hindus.
But a more notable stir was occasioned a little later when
the country began to
be flooded with reports of exhibitions of mesmerism and
hypnotism. Couιism had
not yet come, but the work of Mesmer, Janet, Charcot,
Bernheim, and others in
apparently supernormal segment of the human mind.
"Healing by faith" had always
been a wide-spread tradition; but when such people as Quimby
and others added to
the cult of healing the practice of mesmerism, and subjoined
both to a set of
metaphysical or spiritual formulae, the imaginative
susceptibilities of the
people were vigorously stimulated, and the ferment resulted
in cults of "mind
healing." Quimby was active with his public
demonstrations throughout New
The cult of Swedenborgianism, coming in chiefly from
preceding century as a tremendous contribution to the feeling
of mystic
supernaturalism. Emanuel Swedenborg, who gave up his work as
a noted
mineralogist to take up the writing of his visions and
prophecies, had
profoundly impressed the religious world by the publication
of his enormous
works, the Arcana Coelestia, The Apocalypse Revealed, The
Apocalypse Explained,
and others, in which he claimed that his inner vision had
been opened to a view
of celestial verities. His descriptions of the heavenly
spheres, and of the
relation of the life of the Infinite to our finite
existence, and his theory of
the actual correspondence of every physical fact to some
eternal truth,.13
impressed the mystic sense of many people, who became his
followers and
organized his Church of the New Jerusalem. Though this
following was never large
in number, it was influential in the spread of a type of
"arcane wisdom." In the
first place, Swedenborg's statements that he had been
granted direct glimpses of
the angelic worlds carried a certain impressiveness in view
of his detailed
descriptions of what was there seen. He announced that the
causes of all things
are in the Divine Mind. The end of existence and creation is
to bring man into
conjunction with the higher spirit of the universe, so that
he may become the
image of his creator. The law of correspondence is the key
to all the divine
treasures of wisdom. He declared that he had witnessed the
Last Judgment and
that he was told of the second coming of the Lord. His
teachings influenced
among others Coleridge, Blake, Balzac, and, of course,
Emerson and the James
family. Though not so much of this influence was
specifically Theosophic in
character, it all served to bring much grist to the later
Theosophical mill.
A certain identity of aims and characters between Theosophy
and Swedenborgianism
is revealed in the fact that "in December, 1783, a
little company of
sympathizers, with similar aims, met in
Society,' among the members of which were John Flaxman, the
sculptor, William
Sharpe, the engraver, and F. H. Barthelemon, the
composer."2 It was dissolved
about 1788 when the Swedenborgian churches began to
function. Many such
religious organizations could well be called theosophical
associations, as was
the one founded by Brand in
Another organization which dealt hardly less with heavenly
revelations, and
which must also be regarded as conducive to theosophical
attitudes, was the
"Children of the Light," the Friends, or Quakers.
With a history antedating the
nineteenth century by more than a hundred and fifty years,
these people held a
significant place in the religious life of
delineating. Their intense emphasis upon the direct and
spontaneous irradiation
of the spirit of God into the human consciousness strikes a
deep note of genuine
mysticism. In fact, like Methodism, Quakerism was born in
the midst of a series
of spiritualistic occurrences. George Fox heard the heavenly
voices and received
inspirational messages directly from spiritual visitants.
The report of his
supernatural experiences, and of the miracles of healing
which he was enabled to
perform through spirit-given powers, caused hundreds of
people to flock to his
banner and gave the movement its primary impetus. His gospel
was essentially one
of spirit manifestation, and his whole ethical system grew
out of his conception
of the rιgime of personal life, conduct and mentality which
was best designed to
induce the visitations of spirit influence. The spiritistic
and mystical
experiences of the celebrated Madame Guyon, of
Fox's testimony.Not less inclined than the Friends to
transcendental experiences
were the Shakers, who had settled in eighteen communistic
associations or
colonies in the
healing, prophecy, glossolalia, and the singing of inspired
songs. They were led
by the spirit into deep and holy experiences, and claimed to
be inspired by high
spiritual intelligences with whom they were in hourly
communion. One of their
number, F. W. Evans, wrote to Robert Dale Owen, the
Spiritualist, that the
Shakers had predicted the advent of Spiritualism seven years
previously, and
that the Shaker order was the great medium between this
world and the world of
spirits. He asserted that "Spiritualism originated
among the Shakers of America;
that there were hundreds of mediums in the eighteen Shaker
communities, and
that, in fact, nearly all the Shakers were mediums.
Mediumistic manifestations
are as common among us as gold in
three degrees of spiritual manifestation, the third of which
is the
"ministration of millennial truths to various nations,
tribes, kindred and
people in the spirit world who were hungering and thirsting
after.14
righteousness."4 He further pronounced a panegyric upon
Spiritualism, which is
evidence that the Shakers were in sympathy with any
phenomena which seemed to
indicate a connection with the celestial planes:
"Spiritualism has banished scepticism and infidelity
from the minds of
thousands, comforted the mourner with angelic consolations,
lifted up the
unfortunate, the outcast, the inebriate, taking away the
sting of death, which
has kept mankind under perpetual bondage through fear-so
that death is now, to
its millions of believers,
The kind and gentle servant who unlocks,
With noiseless hand, life's flower-encircled door,
To show us those we loved."5
Still another movement which had its origin in alleged supernaturalistic
manifestations and helped to intensify a general belief in
them, was the Church
of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. In 1820, and again in
1823, Joseph Smith
had a vision of an angel, who revealed to him the repository
of certain records
inscribed on plates of gold, containing the history of the
aboriginal peoples of
America. The ability to employ the mystic powers of Urim and
Thummim, which are
embodied in these records, constituted the special attribute
of the seers of
antiquity. The inscriptions on the gold plates were
represented as the key to
the understanding of ancient scriptures, and were said to be
in a script known
as Reformed Egyptian. The Book of Mormon claims to be an
English translation of
these plates of gold.
It is not necessary here to follow the history of Smith and
his church, but it
is interesting to point out the features of the case that
touch either
Spiritualism or Theosophy. We have already noted the origin
of Smith's
motivating idea in a direct message from the spirit world.
We have also a
curious resemblance to Theosophy in the fact that an alleged
ancient document
was brought to light as a book of authority, and that the
material therein was
asserted to furnish a key to the interpretation of the
archaic scriptures of the
world. Of the twelve articles of the Mormon creed, seven
sections show a spirit
not incongruous with the tendency of Theosophic sentiment.
Article One professes
belief in the Trinity; article Two asserts that men will be
punished for their
own sins, not for Adam's; Three refers to the salvation of
all without
exception; Seven sets forth belief in the gift of tongues,
prophecy,
revelations, visions, healing, etc.; Eight questions the
Bible's accurate
translation; Nine expresses the assurance that God will yet
reveal many great
and important things pertaining to his kingdom; and Eleven
proclaims freedom of
worship and the principle of toleration.
Orson Pratt, one of the leading publicists of the Mormon
cult, said that where
there is an end of manifestation of new phenomena, such as
visions, revelations
and inspiration, the people are lost in blindness. When
prophecies fail,
darkness hangs over the people. In a tract issued by Pratt
it is stated that the
Book of Mormon has been abundantly confirmed by miracles.
"Nearly every branch of the church has been blessed by
miraculous signs and
gifts of the Holy Ghost, by which they have been confirmed,
and by which we know
of a surety that this is the Church of Christ. They know
that the blind see, the
lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, that lepers are
cleansed, that bones
are set, that the cholera is rebuked, and that the most
virulent diseases give
way through faith in the name of Christ and the power of His
gospel."6.15
About 1825, in a meeting at the home of Josiah Quincy in
Boston, a philosophic-religious
movement was launched which may seem to have had but meagre
influence
on the advent of Theosophy later in the century, but which
in its motive and
animating spirit was probably one of the cult's most
immediate precursors. The
Unitarian faith, courageously agitated from 1812 to 1814 by
William E. Channing,
Edward Everett, and Francis Parkman, flowered into a
religious denomination in
1825 and thenceforth exercised, in a measure out of all
proportion to its
numerical strength, a powerful influence on American
religious thought. Under
Emerson and Parker a little later the principle of free
expression of opinion
was carried to such length that the formulation of an
orthodox creed was next to
impossible.
They questioned not only the Trinitarian doctrine, as pagan
rather than
Christian (the identical position taken by Madame Blavatsky
in the volumes of
Isis Unveiled), but the whole orthodox structure. The Bible
was not to be
regarded as God's infallible and inspired word, but a work
of exalted human
agencies. Christ was no heaven-born savior, but a worthy son
of man. If he was
man and anything more, his life is worthless to mere men.
His life was a man's
life, his gospel a man's gospel-otherwise inapplicable to
us. Salvation is
within every person. Death does not determine the state of
the soul for all
eternity; the soul passes on into spirit with all its
earth-won character. In
the life that is to be, as well as in the life that now is,
the soul must reap
what it sows. If there were a Unitarian creed, it might be
summarized as
follows: The fatherhood of God; the brotherhood of man; the
leadership of Jesus;
salvation by character; the progress of mankind onward and
upward forever. All
this, as far it goes, is strikingly harmonious with the
Theosophic position.
That there was an evident community of interests between the
two movements is
indicated by the fact that Unitarianism, like Theosophy,
sought Hindu
connections, and strangely enough made a sympathetic entente
with the Brahmo-Somaj
Society, while Theosophy later affiliated with the
Arya-Somaj.7
No examination of the American background of Theosophy can
fail to take account
of that movement which carried the minds of New England
thinkers to a lofty
pitch during the early half of the nineteenth century,
Transcendentalism. It has
generally been attributed to the impact of German
Romanticism, transmitted by
way of England through Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
French influence was
really more direct and dominating, but the powerful effect
of Oriental religion
and philosophy on Emerson, hitherto not considered
seriously, should not be
overlooked. "All of Emerson's notes on Oriental
scriptures have been deleted
from Bliss Perry's Heart of Emerson's Journals."8 No
student conversant with the
characteristic marks of Indian philosophy needs documentary
corroboration of the
fact that Emerson's thought was saturated with typically
Eastern conceptions.
The evidence runs through nearly all his works like a design
in a woven cloth.
"Scores upon scores of passages in his Journals and
Essays show that he leaned
often on the Vedas for inspiration, and paraphrased lines of
the Puranas in his
poems."9 But direct testimony from Emerson himself is
not wanting. His Journals
prove that his reading of the ancient Oriental classics was
not sporadic, but
more or less constant.10 He refers to some of them in the
lists of each year's
sources. In 1840 he tells how in the heated days he read
nothing but the "Bible
of the tropics, which I find I come back upon every three or
four years. It is
sublime as heat and night and the breathless ocean. It
contains every religious
sentiment. . . . It is no use to put away the book; if I
trust myself in the
woods or in a boat upon the pond, Nature makes a Brahmin of
me presently."11
This was at the age of twenty-seven. In the Journal of 1845
he writes:
"The Indian teaching, through its cloud of legends, has
yet a simple and grand
religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich
veil. It teaches to.16
speak the truth, love others as yourself, and to despise
trifles. The East is
grand-and makes Europe appear the land of trifles. Identity!
Identity! Friend
and foe are of one stuff . . . Cheerful and noble is the
genius of this
cosmogony."12
Lecturing before graduate classes at Harvard he later said:
"Thought has
subsisted for the most part on one root; the Norse
mythology, the Vedas,
Shakespeare have served the ages." In referring in one
passage to the Bible he
says:
"I have used in the above remarks the Bible for the
ethical revelation
considered generally, including, that is, the Vedas, the
sacred writings of
every nation, and not of the Hebrews alone."13
Elsewhere he says:
"Yes, the Zoroastrian, the Indian, the Persian
scriptures are majestic and more
to our daily purpose than this year's almanac or this day's
newspaper. I owed-my
friend and I owed-a magnificent day to the Bhagavat-Gita. It
was the first of
books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or
unworthy, but large,
serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which
in another age and
another climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same
questions which
exercise us. . . . Let us cherish the venerable
oracle."14
The first stanza of Emerson's poem "Brahma, Song of the
Soul," runs as follows:
"If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass and turn again."
Could the strange ideas and hardly less strange language of
this verse have been
drawn elsewhere than from the 19th verse of the Second
Valli, of the Katha
Upanishad,15 which reads?:
"If the slayer thinks I slay; if the slain thinks I am
slain, then both of them
do not know well. It (the soul) does not slay nor is it
slain."
His poem "Hamatreya" comes next in importance as
showing Hindu influence. In
another poem, "Celestial Love," the wheel of birth
and death is referred to:
"In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves."
Emerson argues for reincarnation in the Journal of 1845.
"Traveling the path of
life through thousands of births."
"By the long rotation of fidelity they meet again in
worthy forms." Emerson's
"oversoul" is synonymous with a Sanskrit term. He
regarded matter as the
negative manifestation of the Universal Spirit. Mind was the
expression of the
same Spirit in its positive power. Man, himself, is nothing
but the universal
spirit present in a material organism. Soul is "part
and parcel of God." He says
that "the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and
exercises all organs;
from within and from behind a light shines through us upon
things, and makes us
aware that we are nothing, that the light is all."16
This is Vedanta philosophy.
In the Journal of 1866 he wrote:.17
"In the history of intellect, there is no more
important fact than the Hindu
theology, teaching that the beatitude or supreme good is to
be attained through
science: namely, by the perception of the real from the
unreal, setting aside
matter, and qualities or affections or emotions, and persons
and actions, as
mayas or illusions, and thus arriving at the conception of
the One eternal Life
and Cause, and a perpetual approach and assimilation to Him,
thus escaping new
births and transmigrations. . . . Truth is the principle and
the moral of Hindu
theology, Truth as against the Maya which deceives Gods and
men; Truth, the
principle, and Retirement and Self-denial the means of
attaining it."17
Mr. Christy18 states that Emerson's concept of evolution
must be thought of in
terms of emanation; and a detailed examination of his
concept of compensation
reduces it to the doctrine of Karma.
The Journals are full of quotable passages upon one or
another phase of
Hinduism. And there are his other poems
"Illusions" and "Maya," whose names
bespeak Oriental presentations. But Mr. Christy thinks the
following excerpt is
Emerson's supreme tribute to Orientalism:
"There is no remedy for musty, self-conceited English
life made up of fictitious
hating ideas-like Orientalism. That astonishes and
disconcerts English decorum.
For once there is thunder he never heard, light he never
saw, and power which
trifles with time and space."19
It may seem ludicrous to suggest that Emerson was the chief
forerunner of Madame
Blavatsky, her John the Baptist. Yet seriously, without
Emerson, Madame
Blavatsky could hardly have launched her gospel when she did
with equal hope of
success. There is every justification for the assertion that
Emerson's
Orientalistic contribution to the general Transcendental
trend of thought was
preparatory to Theosophy. It must not be forgotten that his
advocacy of
Brahmanic ideas and doctrines came at a time when the
expression of a laudatory
opinion of the Asiatic religions called forth an opprobrium
from evangelistic
quarters hardly less than vicious in its bitterness.
Theosophy could not hope to
make headway until the virulent edge of that orthodox
prejudice had been
considerably blunted. It was Emerson's magnanimous
eclecticism which
administered the first and severest rebuke to that
prejudice, and inaugurated
that gradual mollification of sentiment toward the Orientals
which made possible
the welcome which Hindu Yogis and Swamis received toward the
end of the century.
The exposition of Emerson's orientalism makes it unnecessary
to trace the
evidences of a similar influence running through the
philosophical thinking of
Thoreau and Walt Whitman. The robust cosmopolitanism of
these two intellects
lifted them out of the provincialisms of the current
denominations into the
realm of universal sympathies. We know that Thoreau became
the recipient of
forty-four volumes of the Hindu texts in 1854; but it is
evident that he, like
Emerson, had had contact with Brahmanical literature
previous to that. His works
are replete with references to Eastern ideas and beliefs. He
could hardly have
associated so closely with Emerson as he did and escaped the
contagion of the
latter's Oriental enthusiasm.
Mr. Horace L. Traubel, one of the three literary executors
of Whitman, had in
his possession the poet's own copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
Perry and Binns, in
their biographies of Whitman, give lists of the literature
with which he was
familiar; and many ancient authors are mentioned. Among them
are Confucius, the
Hindu poets, Persian poets, Zoroaster; portions of the Vedas
and Puranas,
Alger's Oriental Poetry and other Eastern sources. Dr.
Richard M. Bucke, another.18
of the three literary executors, and a close friend and
associate of "the good
gray poet," was one of the prominent early
Theosophists, and it is reasonable to
presume that Whitman was familiar with Theosophic theory
through the channel of
this friendship. Whitman likewise gave form and body to
another volume of
sentiment which has contributed, no one can say how much, to
the adoption of
Theosophy. This was America's own native mysticism. It
created an atmosphere in
which the traditions of the supernatural grew robust and
realistic.
Attention must now be directed to that wide-spread movement
in America which has
come to be known as New Thought. It came, as has been hinted
at, out of the
spiritualization, or one might say, doctrinization, of
mesmerism. Observation of
the surprising effects of hypnotic control, indicating the
presence of a psychic
energy in man susceptible to external or self-generated
suggestion, led to the
inference that a linking of spiritual affirmation with the
unconscious dynamism
would conduce to invariably beneficent results, that might
be made permanent for
character. If a jocular suggestion by the stage mesmerist
could lead the subject
into a ludicrous performance; if a suggestion of illness, of
pain, of a
headache, could produce the veritable symptoms; why could
not a suggestion of
adequate strength and authority lead to the actualization of
health, of
personality, of well-being, of spirituality? The task was
merely to transform
animal magnetism into spiritual suggestion. The aim was to
indoctrinate the
subconscious mind with a fixation of spiritual sufficiency
and opulence, until
the personality came to embody and manifest on the physical
plane of life the
character of the inner motivation. Seeing what an obsession
of a fixed abnormal
idea had done to the body and mind in many cases, New
Thought tried to
regenerate the life in a positive and salutary direction by
the conscious
implantation of a higher spiritual concept, until it, too,
became obsessive, and
wrought an effect on the outer life coφrdinate with its own
nature. The process
of hypnotic suggestion became a moral technique, with a
potent religious
formula, according to which spiritual truth functioned in
place of personal
magnetic force. Essentially it reduced itself to the
business of self-hypnotization
by a lofty conception. Thought itself was seen to possess
mesmeric
power. "As a man thinketh in his heart" became the
slogan of New Thought, and
the kindred Biblical adjuration-"Be ye transformed by
the renewing of your
mind"-furnished the needed incentive to positive mental
aggression. The world of
today is familiar with the line of phrases which convey the
basic ideology of
the New Thought cults. One hears much of being in tune with
the Infinite, of
making the at-one-ment with the powers of life, of getting
into harmony with the
universe, of making contact with the reservoir of Eternal
Supply, of getting en
rapport with the Cosmic Consciousness, of keeping ourselves
puny and stunted
because we do not ask more determinedly from the Boundless.
Here is unmistakable evidence of a somewhat diluted
Hinduism. Under the
pioneering of P. P. Quimby, Horatio W. Dresser, and others,
study clubs were
formed and lecture courses given. Charles Brodie Patterson,
W. J. Colville,
James Lane Allen, C. D. Larson, Orison S. Marden, and a host
of others, aided in
the popularization of these ideas, until in the past few
decades there has been
witnessed an almost endless brood of ramifications from the
parent conception,
with associations of Spiritual Science, Divine Science,
Cosmic Truth, Universal
Light and Harmony carrying the message. So we have been
called upon to witness
the odd spectacle of what was essentially Hindu Yoga
philosophy masquerading in
the guise of commanding personality and forceful
salesmanship! But grotesque as
these developments have been, there is no doubting their
importance in the
Theosophical background. They have served to introduce the
thought of the Orient
to thousands, and have become stepping-stones to its deeper
investigation..19
A concomitant episode in the expansion of New Thought and
Transcendentalism was
the direct program of Hindu propaganda fathered by Hindu
spokesmen themselves.
When it became profitable, numerous Yogis, Swamis,
"Adepts," and "Mahatmas" came
to this country and lectured on the doctrines and principles
of Orientalism to
audiences of ιlite people with mystical susceptibilities.
Some time in the
seventies, Boston was galvanized into a veritable quiver of
interest in Eastern
doctrines by the eloquent P. C. Mazoomdar, author of The
Oriental Christ, whose
campaign left its deep impress. His work, in fact, formed
one of the links
between Unitarianism and Brahmanic thought, already noted.
In 1893 Swami
Vivekananda, chosen as a delegate to the World Congress of
Religions at the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and author of Yoga
Philosophy, began preaching
the Yoga principles of thought and discipline, and
instituted in New York the
Vedanta Society. Almost every year since his coming has
brought public lectures
and private instruction courses by native Hindus in the
large American cities.
Concomitant with the evolution of New Thought came the
sensational dissemination
of Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science. Offspring of P. P.
Quimby's mesmeric science,
and erected by Mrs. Eddy's strange enthusiasm into a healing
cult based on a
reinterpretation of Christian doctrines-the allness of
Spirit and the
nothingness of matter-the organization has enjoyed a steady
and pronounced
growth and drawn into its pale thousands of Christian
communicants who felt the
need of a more dynamic or more fruitful gospel. The
conception of the impotence
of matter, as non-being, is as old as Greek and Hindu
philosophy. Mrs. Eddy's
contribution in the matter was her use of the philosophical
idea as a
psychological mantram for healing, and her adroitness in
lining up the Christian
scriptures to support the idea.
It would require a fairly discerning insight to mark out
clearly the inter-connection
of Christian Science and Theosophy. There is basically
little
similarity between the two schools, or little common ground
on which they might
meet. On the contrary there is much direct antagonism in
their views and dogma.
Nevertheless the Boston cult tended indirectly to bring some
of its votaries
along the path toward occultism. In the first place, like
Unitarianism, it had
induced thousands of sincere seekers for a new and liberal
faith to sever the
ties of their former servile attachment to an uninspiring
orthodoxy. Secondly,
Christian Science does yeoman service in
"demonstrating" the spiritual
viewpoint. Its emphasis on spirit, as opposed to material
concepts of reality,
is entirely favorable to the general theses of Theosophy. Thirdly,
the
intellectual limitations of the system develop the need of a
larger philosophy,
which Theosophy stands ready to supply. Christian Science,
being primarily a
Christian healing cult, with a body of ideas adequate to
that function, often
leads the intelligent and open-minded student in its ranks
to become aware that
it falls far short of offering a comprehensive philosophy of
life. It has little
or nothing to say about man's origin, his present rank in a
universal order, or
his destiny. It leaves the pivotal question of immortality
in the same status as
does conventional Christianity. Many Christian Science
adherents have seen that
Theosophy offers a fuller and more adequate cosmograph, and
accordingly adopted
it. Their experience in the Eddy system brought them to the
outer court of the
Occult Temple.20
Among major movements that paved the way for Theosophy, the
one perhaps most
directly conducive to it is Spiritualism, for the founder of
the Theosophical
Society began her career in the Spiritualistic ranks. On
account of this close
relationship it is necessary to outline the origin and
spread of this strange
movement more fully..20
The weird behavior of two country girls, the one twelve and
the other nine, in
the hamlet of Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, in the
spring of 1847, was
like a spark to power for the release of religious fancy;
for Margaret and Kate
Fox were supposed to have picked up again the thread of
communication between
the world of human consciousness and the world of disembodied
spirits, and thus
to have given fresh reinforcement to man's assurance of
immortality. From this
bizarre beginning the movement spread rapidly to all parts
of America, England,
and France. In nearly every town in America groups were soon
meeting, eager for
manifestations and fervently invoking the denizens of the
unseen worlds. Various
methods and means were provided whereby the disembodied
entities could
communicate with dull mundane faculties. Many and varied
were the types of
response. Besides the simple "raps," there were
tinklings of tiny aerial bells,
flashings of light, tipping of tables, levitation of
furniture and of human
bodies, messages through the planchette, free voice
messages, trumpet speaking,
alphabet rapping, materialization of the hands and of
complete forms, trance
catalepsis and inspiration, automatic writing, slate
writing, glossolalia, and
many other variety of phenomena. Mediums, clairvoyants,
inspirational speakers
sprang forward plentifully; and each one became the focus of
a group activity.
It is somewhat difficult for us to reconstruct the picture
of this flare of
interest and activity, the scope of this absorbing passion
for spirit
manifestation. It attests the eagerness of the human heart
for tangible evidence
of survival. With periodical ebb and flow it has persisted
to the present day,
when its vogue is hardly less general than at any former
time. In the fifties
and sixties the Spiritualistic agitation was in full flush,
with many
extraordinary occurrences accredited to its exponents.21
Spiritualism encountered opposition among the clergy and the
materialistic
scientists, yet it has hardly ever been wanting in adherents
among the members
of both groups. An acquaintance with its supporters would
reveal a surprising
list of high civil and government officials, attorneys,
clergymen, physicians,
professors, and scientists.22
One of the first Spiritualistic writers of this country was
Robert Dale Owen,
whose Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World and The
Debatable Land were
notable contributions. Two of the most eminent
representatives of the movement
in its earliest days were Prof. Robert Hare, an eminent
scientist and the
inventor of the oxyhydrogen blow-pipe, and Judge Edmonds, a
leading jurist. Both
these men had approached the subject at first in a skeptical
spirit, with the
intention of disclosing its unsound premises; but they were
fair enough to study
the evidence impartially, with the result that both were convinced
of the
genuineness of the phenomena. Both avowed their convictions
courageously in
public, and Judge Edmonds made extensive lecture tours of
the country, the
propaganda effect of which was great.23 Before the actual
launching of the
Theosophical Society in 1875 at least four prominent later
Theosophists had
played more or less important rτles in the drama of
Spiritualism. Madame
Blavatsky, as we shall see, had identified herself with its
activities; Mr. J.
R. Newton was a vigorous worker; and it was Col. Olcott
himself who brought the
manifestations taking place in 1873 at the Eddy farmhouse
near Chittenden,
Vermont, to public notice and who put forth one of the first
large volumes
covering these and other phenomena in 1874, People From the
Other World. The
fourth member was Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, who had served
as a medium with
the Bulwer-Lytton group of psychic investigators in England,
and who added two
books to Spiritualistic literature-Art Magic and Nineteenth
Century Miracles.
Col. Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, and Mrs. Britten made
material contributions to
several Spiritualistic magazines, especially The Spiritual
Scientist, edited in
Boston..21
Meantime Spiritualistic investigation got under way and
after the sixties a
stream of reports, case histories, accounts of phenomena,
and books from
prominent advocates flooded the country. The Seybert
Commission on Spiritualism,
composed of leading officers and professors at the
University of Pennsylvania,
submitted its report in 1888. In the same year R. B.
Davenport undertook to turn
the world away from what he considered a delusion with his
book Deathblow to
Spiritualism: The True Story of the Fox Sisters; but he
found that Spiritualism
had a strange vitality that enabled it to survive many a
"deathblow." As a
result of studies in psychic phenomena in England came F. W.
H. Myers'
impressive work, The Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death, in
which the foundations for the theory of the subliminal or
subconscious mind were
laid.
But the work of the mediums themselves kept public feeling
most keenly alert. A
list of some of the most prominent ones includes Mrs.
Hayden, Henry Slade,
Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the slate-writer, Robert Houdin (who
bequeathed his name
and exploits to the later Houdini), Ira and William
Davenport, Anna Eva Fay,
Charles Slade, Eusapia Paladino, Mrs. Leonara Piper. Robert
Dale Owen, already
mentioned as author, was a medium of no mean ability. In the
same category was
J. M. Peebles, of California, whose books, Seers of the Ages
and Who Are These
Spiritualists? and whose public lecture tours, rendered him
one of the most
prominent of all the advocates of the cult. A career of
inspirational public
speaking was staged by Cora V. Richmond, who gave lectures
on erudite themes
with an uncommon flow of eloquence. W. J. Colville began
where she ended, giving
unprepared addresses on topics suggested by the audience.
The three most famous American mediums deserve somewhat more
extended treatment.
The first of the trio is Daniel Dunglas Home, who was a poor
Scottish boy
adopted in America. While a child, spiritual power
manifested itself to him to
his terror and annoyance. Raps came around him on the table
or desk, on the
chairs or walls. The furniture moved about and was attracted
toward him. His
aunt, with whom he lived was in consternation at these
phenomena, and, deeming
him possessed, sent for three clergymen to exorcise the
spirit; when they did
not succeed, she threw his Sunday suit and linen out the
window and pushed him
out-of-doors. He was thus cast on the world without friends,
but the power that
he possessed raised him friends and sent him forth from
America to be the
planter of Spiritualism all over Europe.24
The second of the triumvirate was Andrew Jackson Davis. His
function seemed to
be that of the seer and the scribe, rather than of the
producer of material
operations. He was born of poor parents, in 1826, in Orange
Country, New York.
He seems to have inherited a clairvoyant faculty. He
received only five months'
schooling in the village, it being "found impossible to
teach him anything
there."25 During his solitary hours in the fields he
saw visions and heard
voices. Removing to Poughkeepsie, he became the clairvoyant
of a mesmeric
lecturer, and in this capacity began to excite wonder by his
revelations. This
was before the Rochester knockings were heard. He diagnosed
and healed diseases,
and prescribed for scores who came to him, surprising both
patients and
physicians by his competence. Then he began to see
"into the heart of things,"
to descry the essential nature of the world and the
spiritual constitution of
the universe. He could see the interior of bodies and the
metals hidden in the
earth. Adding his testimony to that of Fox and Swedenborg,
he asserted that
every animal represented some human quality, some vice or
virtue. He gave Greek
and Latin names of things, without having a knowledge of
these languages. In a
vision he beheld The Magic Staff on which he was urged to
learn during life; on
it was written his life's motto: "Under all
circumstances keep an open mind." In
1845 he delivered one hundred and fifty-seven lectures in
New York which.22
announced a new philosophy of the universe. They were
published under the title,
Nature's Divine Revelation, a book of eight hundred pages.
Davis then became a
voluminous writer.26
Thomas L. Harris, the third great representative, was much
attracted by Davis'
The Divine Revelations of Nature, but developed spiritistic
powers along a
somewhat different line, that of poetic inspiration. In his
early exhibitions of
this supernormal faculty he dictated who epics, containing
occasionally
excellent verse, under the alleged influence of Byron,
Shelley, Keats and
others. The interesting manner in which these poems-a whole
volume of three or
four hundred pages at a time-were created, is more amazing
than their poetic
merit. Mr. Brittan, an English publisher, tells us that
Harris dictated and he
wrote down The Lyric of the Golden Age, a poem of 381 pages,
in ninety-four
hours! The Lyric of the Morning Land and other pretentious
works were produced
in a similar manner.
"But," says William Howitt in his History of the
Supernatural, "the progress of
Harris into an inspirational oratory is still more
surprising. He claims, by
opening up his interior being, to receive influx of divine
intuition in such
abundance and power as to throw off under its influence the
most astonishing
strains of eloquence. This receptive and communicative power
he attributes to an
internal spiritual breathing corresponding to the outer
natural breathing. As
the body lungs imbibe air, so, he contends, the spiritual
lungs inspire and
respire the divine aura, refluent with the highest thought
and purest sentiment,
and that without any labor or trial of brain."27
Spiritualism is one of the most direct lines of approach to
Theosophy, since an
acceptance of the possibility of spiritistic phenomena is a
prerequisite for the
adoption of the larger scheme of occult truth. Spiritualism
covers a portion of
the ground embraced by the belief in reincarnation, and in
so far constitutes an
introduction to it. Theosophy is further, an endorsement of
the primary position
of the Spiritualists regarding the survival of the soul
entity, and thus
commends itself to their approbation. The Spiritualists have
been considerably
vexed by the question of reincarnation, and their ranks are
split over the
subject. Some of the message seem to endorse it, others
evade it, and some
negate the idea. What is significant at this point is that
the Spiritualistic
agitation prepared the way for Theosophic conceptions. A
large percentage of the
first membership came from the ranks of the Spiritualists.
But Spiritualism is but one facet of a human interest which
has expressed itself
in all ages, embracing the various forms of mysticism,
occultism, esotericism,
magic, healing, wonder-working, arcane science, and theurgy.
The growing
acquaintance with Yoga practice and Hindu philosophy in this
country under the
stimulus of many eloquent Eastern representatives has
already been mentioned.
The demonstrations of mesmeric power lent much plausibility
to Oriental
pretensions to extraordinary genius for that sort of thing.
More than might be
supposed, there was prevalent in Europe and America alike a
never-dying
tradition of magical art, a survival of Medieval European
beliefs in superhuman
activities and powers both in man and nature. Among the
rural and unschooled
populations this tradition assumed the form of harmless
superstitions. Among
more learned peoples it issued in philosophic speculations
dealing with the
spiritual energies of nature, the hidden faculties of man,
such as prophecy,
tongues and ecstatic vision, and the extent and possibility
of man's control
over the external world through the manipulation of a subtle
ether possessing
magnetic quality. The heritage of Paracelsus, Robert Fludd,
Thomas Vaughn and
Roger Bacon, Agrippa von Nettesheim, the Florentine
Platonists and their German,
French, and English heirs still lingered. The Christian
scriptures were.23
themselves replete with incidents of the supernatural, with
necromancy,
witchcraft, miracles, ghost-walking, spirit messages,
symbolical dreams, and the
whole armory of thaumaturgical exploits. The doctrine of
Satan was itself
calculated to enliven the imagination with ideas of demoniac
possession, and was
all the more credible by reason of the prevalence of
insanity which was ascribed
to spirit obsession. The early nineteenth century was must
closer to the Middle
Ages than our own time is, not only because education was
less general, but also
because a far larger proportion of the population was
agrarian instead of
metropolitan. Such cults were, however, by no means
restricted to "backwoods"
sections. They were astonishingly prevalent in the larger
centers. More
enlightened groups accepted a less crude form of the
practices. Where knowledge
ceases superstition may begin; and the problems of life that
press upon us for
solution and that are still beyond our grasp, lead the mind
into every sort of
rationalization or speculation.
Perhaps more people than acknowledge God in church pews
believe in the existence
of intelligences that play a part in life, whether in answer
to prayer, in
suggestive dreams, in occasional vision and apparitions, in
messages through
mediums, or in whatever guise; and out of such an
unreflective theology arise
many of the types of superstitious philosophy. To analyze
this situation in its
entirety would take us into extensive fields of folk-lore
and involve every sort
of old wives' tale imaginable. The chief point is that the
varieties of chimney-corner
legend and omnipresent superstition have had their origin in
a larger
primitive interpretation of the facts and forces of nature.
They must be
recognized as the modern progeny of ancient hylozoism and
animism. In the
childhood of our culture, as well as in the childhood of the
race and of the
individual, there is a close sympathy between man and nature
which leads him to
ascribe living quality to the external world. Countryside
fables are doubtless
the jejune remnant of what was once felt to be a vital
magnetic relation between
man's spirit and the spirit of the world. They are the
distorted forms of some
of the ancient rites for effecting magical intercourse
between man and nature.
While it is not to be inferred that Theosophy itself was
built on the material
embodied in countryside credulity, it will be seen that the
native inclination
toward an animistic interpretation of phenomena was in a
measure true to the
deeper theses which the new cult presented. Madame Blavatsky
herself says in
Isis Unveiled that the spontaneous responsiveness of the
peasant mind is likely
to lead to a closer apprehension of the living spirit of
Nature than can be
attained by the sophistications of reason.
The major tendencies in the direction of Theosophy have now
been enumerated. It
remains only to mention the scattering of American students
before 1875 whose
researches were taking them into the realm where the
fundamentals of Theosophy
itself were to be found. We refer to the Rosicrucians, the
Freemasons, the
Kabalists, Hermeticists, Egyptologists, Assyriologists,
students of the
Mysteries, of the Christian origins, of the pagan cults, and
the small but
gradually increasing number of Comparative Religionists and
Philologists.28
There were men of intelligence both in Europe and America,
who had kept on the
track of ancient and medieval esotericism, and the opening
up of Sanskrit
literature gave a decided impetus to a renaissance of
research in those realms.
The material that went into Frazer's Golden Bough, Ignatius
Donnelley's
Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, Hargrave Jennings' The
Rosicrucians,and many
other compendious works of the sort, was being collated out
of the flotsam and
jetsam of ancient survival and assembled into a picture
beginning to assume
definite outline and more than haphazard meaning. The great
system of Neo-Platonism,
the Gnostics, with Apollonius of Tyana, and Philo Judaeus
were coming
under inspection. The universality of religious myths and
rites was being noted..24
In short, the large body of ancient thought, so deeply
imbued with the occult,
was beginning to be scrutinized by the scholars of the
nineteenth century.
It was into this situation that Madame Blavatsky came. Her
office, she said, was
that of a clavigera; she bore a key which would provide
students with a
principle of integration for the loose material which would
enable them to piece
together the scattered stones and glittering jewels picked
up here and there
into a structure of surpassing grandeur and priceless worth.
She would show that
the gems of literature, whose mystic profundity astonished
and perplexed the
savants, were but the fragments of a once-glorious spiritual
Gnosis..25
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER III
HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND
PSYCHIC CAREER
Who was Madame Blavatsky? Every new rιgime of belief or of
social organization
must be studied with a view to determining as far as
possible how much of the
movement is a contribution of the individuality of the
founder and how much
represents a traditional deposit. This inquiry is of first
importance in a
consideration of the Theosophical Society, because, more
than in most systems,
the personal endowment of its founder gave it its specific
coloring, character
and form. It should be said at this point that the career of
Madame Blavatsky as
outlined here does not purport to be a complete or authoritative
biography. It
was obviously impossible to undertake such an investigation
of her life, as the
difficulties of obscure research in three or four continents
were practically
prohibitive. We have been forced to base our study upon the
body of biographical
material that has been assembled around her name, emanating,
first, from her
relatives, secondly, from her followers and admirers, and
thirdly, from her
critics. Her life, up to the age of forty-two, narrowly
escaped consignment to
the realm of mythology, if not total oblivion, but was at
least partially
redeemed to the status of history by the exertions of Mr. A.
P. Sinnett, who
procured information from members of her own family in
Russia. His book,
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, has been our
chief source of
information about her youth and early career. The Countess
Wachtmeister's
Reminiscences, Col. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, V.
Solovyoff's A Modern Priestess
of Isis and William Kingsland's The Real Helena P.
Blavatsky, together with
Madame Blavatsky's own letters, especially those to Mr. And
Mrs. A. P. Sinnett,
are the main works relied upon to guide our story. If the
eventful life of our
subject is to be further redeemed from mystery and sheer
tradition into which it
already seems to be fading, a more thorough critical study
of it should be
undertaken, based upon authentic data collected from
first-hand sources as far
as this is possible.
It is to be understood, then, that the aim in this treatise
is to present her
career as it is told and believed by Theosophists, although
it is admittedly
already partly legendary. The precise extent it is to be
regarded as
mythological must be left to the individual reader, and to
future study, to
determine.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in the Ukrainian city of
Ekaterinoslaw on the
night between the 30th and 31st of July, 1831. Her father
was Col. Peter Hahn,
and her mother previous to her marriage, Helene Fadeef. The
father was the son
of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn, from a noble family
of Mecklenberg,
Germany, settled in Russia. Her mother's parents were Privy
Councillor Andrew
Fadeef and the Princess Helene Dolgorouky. Madame
Blavatsky's grandfather was a
cousin of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the authoress. Her own
mother was known in the
literary world between 1830 and 1840 under the nom de plume
of Zenaοda R.-the.26
first novel writer that had ever appeared in Russia, says
the account. Though
she died before her twenty-fifth year, she left some dozen
novels of the
romantic school, most of which have been translated into
German. The theory of
heredity would thus give us, apparently, abundant background
for whatever
literary propensities the daughter was later to display. On
her mother's side
she was a scion of the noble lineage of the Dolgorouky's,
who could trace direct
connections with Russia's founder, Rurik, and the Imperial
line.
Madame Blavatsky came on to the Russian scene during a year
fatal to the Slavic
nation, as to all Europe, owing to the decimation of the
population by the first
visitation of the cholera. Her own birth was quickened by
several deaths in the
household. She was ushered into the world amid coffins and
sorrowing. The infant
was so sickly that a hurried baptism was resorted to in the
effort to anticipate
death. During the ceremony, which was signalized with
elaborate Greek Catholic
paraphernalia of lighted tapers, the child-aunt of the baby
accidentally set
fire to the long robes of the priest, who was severely
burned. This incident was
interpreted as a bad omen, and in the eyes of the townsfolk
the infant was
doomed to a life of trouble.
From the very date of her birth, a peculiar tradition
operated to invest the
life of the growing child with an odor of superstition and
mystic awe. In Russia
each household was supposed to be under the tutelary
supervision of a Domovoy,
or house goblin, whose guardianship was propitious, except
on March 30th, when,
for mysterious reasons, he became mischievous. But the
tradition strangely
excepted from this malevolent spell of the Domovoy those
born on the night of
July 30-31, a time closely associated in the annals of
popular belief with
witches and their doings. The child came early to learn why
it was that, on
every recurring March 30th, she was carried around the
house, stables and cowpen
and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water,
while the nurse
repeated some mystic incantation. Her first conscious
recognition of herself
must thus have been tinged with a feeling that she was in
some particular
fashion set apart, that she was somehow the object of
special care and attention
from invisible powers.
The Dnieper aided in weaving a spell of enchantment about
her infancy. No
Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever crosses it without
preparing himself for death.
Along its banks, where the child strolled with her nurses,
the Rusalky (undines,
nymphs) haunted the willow trees and the rushes. She was
told that she was
impervious to their influences, and in this sense of
superiority she alone dared
to approach those sandy shores. She had heard the servants'
tales of these
nymphs. Filled with this realization of her favored standing
with the Rusalky,
she one day threatened a youngster who had roused her
displeasure that she would
have the nymphs tickle him to death, whereupon the lad ran
wildly away and was
found dead on the sands-whether from fright or from having
stumbled into one of
the treacherous sandpits which the swirling waters quickly
turn into whirlpools.
Her mother died when Mlle. Hahn was still a child. She and
her younger sister
were taken to live with her father, in barracks with his
regiment, and until the
age of eleven, they were entertained, amused and spoiled as
les enfants du
rιgiment. After that they went to live at Saratow with their
grandmother, where
their grandfather was civil governor. The child was
"alternately petted and
punished, spoiled and hardened," and was difficult to
manage. She was of
uncertain health, "ever sick and dying," a sleep
walker, and given to abnormal
psychic peculiarities, ascribed by her orthodox nurses to
possession by the
devil; so that, as she afterwards said, "she was
drenched with enough holy water
to float a ship," and exorcised by priests. She was a
born rebel against
restraint, and went into ungovernable fits of passion, which
left her violently.27
shaken; but at the opposite apogee of her disposition she
was filled with
impulses of the extremest kindliness and affection. Through
life she had this
dual temper. Those who knew her better nature tolerated the
irascible element.
She was lively, highly-gifted, full of humor, and of
remarkable doing. She had a
passionate curiosity for everything savoring of the weird,
the uncanny, the
mysterious; she was strangely attracted by the theme of
death. Her imagination,
wildly roaming, appeared to create about her a world of
fairy or elfish
creatures with whom she held converse in whispers by the
hour. She defied all
and everything. She had to be watched lest she escape from
the house and mingle
with ragged urchins. She preferred to listen to the tales of
Madame Peigneur
(her governess) than do her lessons. She would openly rebel
against her text-books
and run off to the woods or hide in the dusky corridors of
the basement of
the great house where her grandfather lived. In a secluded
dark recess in the
"Catacombs" she had erected a barrier of old
broken chairs and tables, and
there, up near the ceiling under an iron-barred window, she
would secrete
herself for hours, reading a book of popular legends known
as Solomon's Wisdom.
At times she bent to her books in a spasm of scholarly
devotion to amend for
mischief making. Her grandparents' enormous library was then
the object of her
constant interest. No less passionately would she drink in
the wonders of
narratives given in her presence. Every fairy-tale became a
living event to her.
She would be found speaking to the stuffed animals and birds
in the museum in
the old house. She said the pigeons were cooing fairy-tales
to her. She heard a
voice in every natural object; nature was animate and, to
her, articulate. She
seemed to know the inner life and secrets of every species
of insect, bird, and
reptile found about the place. She would recreate their past
and describe
vividly their feelings. At this early date she detailed the
events of the past
incarnations of the stuffed animals in the museum.
Times without number the little girl was heard conversing
with playmates of her
own age, invisible to others. There was in particular a
little hunchback boy, a
favorite phantom companion of her solitude, for whose
neglect by the servants
and nurses she was often excited to resentment.
"But amidst the strange double life she thus led from
her earliest
recollections, she would sometimes have visions of a mature
protector, whose
imposing appearance dominated her imagination from a very
early period. This
protector was always the same, his features never changed;
in after life she met
him as a living man and knew him as though she had been
brought up in his
presence."1
In the neighborhood of the residence was an old man, a
magician, whose doings
filled the mind of the young seeress with wonder. The old
man, a centenarian,
learned to know the young girl and he used to say of her:
"This little lady is
quite different from all of you. There are great events
lying in wait for her in
the future. I feel sorry in thinking that I will not live to
see my predictions
of her verified; but they will all come to pass!"
Her whole career is dotted with miraculous escapes from
danger and still more
miraculous recoveries from wounds, sicknesses and fevers.
One of the first
appearances of a protective hand in her life came far back
in her childhood. She
had always entertained a marked curiosity about a curtained
portrait in her
grandfather's castle at Saratow. It was hung so high that it
was far beyond her
reach. Denied permission to see it, she awaited her
opportunity to catch a
glimpse of it by stealth; and when left alone on one
occasion she dragged a
table to the wall, set another table on that, and a chair on
top, and managed to
clamber up. On tiptoe she just contrived to pull back the
curtain. The sight of.28
the picture was so startling that she made an involuntary
movement backwards,
lost her balance and toppled with her pyramid to the floor.
In falling she lost
consciousness; but when she came to her senses some moments
afterwards, she was
amazed to see the tables, chairs, and everything in proper order
in the room.
The curtain was slipped back again on the rings, and no mark
of the episode was
left except the imprint of her small hand on the wall high
up beside the
picture.
At another time, when she was nearing the age of fourteen,
her riding horse
bolted and flung her, with her foot caught in the stirrup.
As the animal plunged
forward she expected to be dragged to death, but felt
herself buoyed up by a
strange force, and escaped without a scratch.
It was not many years more until the young girl's possession
of gifts and
extraordinary faculties, commonly classed as mediumistic,
became an admitted
fact among her relatives and close associates. She would
answer questions
locating lost property, or solving other perplexities of the
household. She
sometimes blurted out to visitors that they would die, or
meet with misfortune
or accident; and her prophecies usually came true.
In 1844 the father, Col. Hahn, took Helena for her first
journey abroad. She
went with him to Paris and London, but proved a troublesome
charge.
Her youthful marriage deserves narration with some fulness,
if only because it
precipitated the lady out of her home and into that phase of
her career which
has been referred to as her period of preparation and
apprenticeship. As her
aunt, Madame Fadeef, describes her marriage:
"she cared not whether she should get married or not.
She had been simply defied
one day by her governess to find any man who would be her
husband, in view of
her temper and disposition. The governess, to emphasize the
taunt, said that
even the old man she had found so ugly and had laughed at so
much calling him a
'plumeless raven,' that even he would decline her for his
wife. That was enough;
three days afterwards she made him propose, and then,
frightened at what she had
done, sought to escape from her joking acceptance of his
offer. But it was too
late. All she knew and understood was-when too late-that she
was now forced to
accept a master she cared nothing for, nay, that she hated;
that she was tied to
him by the law of the country, hand and foot. A 'great
horror' crept upon her,
as she explained it later; one desire, ardent, unceasing,
irresistible, got hold
of her entire being, led her on, so to say, by the hand,
forcing her to act
instinctively, as she would have done if, in the act of
saving her life, she had
been running away from a mortal danger. There had been a
distinct attempt to
impress her with the solemnity of marriage, with her future
obligations and her
duties to her husband and married life. A few hours later at
the altar she heard
the priest saying to her: 'Thou shalt honor and obey thy
husband,' and at this
hated word 'shalt' her young face-for she was hardly
seventeen-was seen to flush
angrily, then to become deadly pale. She was overheard to mutter
in response
through her set teeth-'Surely I shall not.'
"And surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to
take the law and her future
life into her own hands, and-she left her husband forever,
without giving him an
opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
"Thus Madame Blavatsky abandoned her country at
seventeen and passed ten long
years in strange and out-of-the-way places,--in Central
Asia, India, South
America, Africa and Eastern Europe."2.29
True, before taking this drastic step she acceded to her
father's plea to do the
conventional thing; and she let the old General take her,
though even then not
without attempts to escape, on what may by courtesy of
language be called a
honeymoon, which drawled out, amid bickerings, to a length
of three months, and
was terminated after a bitter quarrel by the bride's dash
for freedom on
horseback. Gen. Blavatsky by this time saw the impossibility
of the situation
and acceded to the inevitable.
Tracing the life of Madame Blavatsky from this event through
her personally-conducted
globe-roaming becomes difficult, owing to the meagreness of
information. Her relatives and her later Theosophic
associates have done their
best to piece together the crazy-quilt design of her
wanderings and attendant
events of any significance. She herself kept no chronicle of
her journeys, and
it was only at long intervals, when she emerged out of the
deserts or jungles of
a country to visit its metropolis, or when she needed to
write for money, that
she sent letters back home. The family was at first alarmed
by her defection
from the fireside, but were constrained to acquiesce in the
situation by their
recognition of her immitigable distaste for her veteran
husband. If no other tie
kept her attached to the home circle, her need of funds
obliged her to keep in
touch with her father, who supplied her with money without
betraying her
confidences as to her successive destinations. He acceded to
her plans because
he had tried in vain to secure a Russian divorce; and he
felt that a few years
of travel for his daughter might best ease the family
situation. Ten years
elapsed before the fugitive saw her relatives again.
Her first emergence after her disappearance was in Egypt.
She seems to have
traveled there with a Countess K------, and at that time
began to pick up some
occult teaching of a poorer sort. She encountered an old
Copt, a man with a
great reputation as a magician. She proved an apt pupil, and
the instructor
became so much interested in her that when she revisited
Egypt years later, the
special attention he (then a retired ascetic) showed her,
attracted the notice
of the populace at Bulak.
After her appearance in Egypt she seems to have bobbed up in
Paris, where she
made the acquaintance of many literary people, and where a
famous mesmerist,
struck with her psychic gifts, was eager to put her to work
as a sensitive. To
escape his importunities she appears to have gone to London.
There she stayed
for a time with an old Russian lady, a Countess B., at
Mivart's Hotel. She
remained for some time after her friend's departure, but
could not afterwards
recall where she resided.
Occasionally in her travels she fell in with fellow Russians
who were glad to
accompany her and sometimes to befriend her. She indulged in
a tour about Europe
in 1850 with the Countess B., but was again in Paris when
the New Year of 1851
was acclaimed. Her next move was actuated by a passionate
interest in the North
American Indians, which she had acquired from a perusal of
Fenimore Cooper's
Leatherstocking Tales. Her zeal in this pursuit took her to
Canada in July of
1851. At Quebec her idealizations suffered a rude shock,
when, being introduced
to a party of Indians, both the noble Redskins and some articles
of her property
disappeared while she was trying to pry from the squaws a
recital of the secret
powers of their medicine men. Dropping the Indians, she
turned her interest to
the rising sect of the Mormons, being attracted doubtless by
their possession of
an alleged Hermetic document obtained through psychic
revelation. But the
destruction of the original Mormon city of Nauvoo, Missouri,
by a mob, scattered
the sect across the plains, and Madame Blavatsky thought the
time propitious for
exploring the traditions and arcana of Mexico. She came to
New Orleans. Here the
Voodoo practices of a settlement of Negroes from the West
Indies engaged her.30
interest, and her reckless curiosity might have led her into
dangerous contact
with these magicians; but her protective power reappeared to
warn her in a
vision of the risk she was running, and she hastened on to
new experiences.
Through Texas she reached Mexico, protected only by her own
reckless daring and
by the occasional intercession of some chance companion. She
seems to have owed
much in this way to an old Canadian, Pθre Jacques, who
steered her safely
through many perils. At Copau in Mexico she chanced to meet
a Hindu, who styled
himself a "chela" of the Masters (or adepts in
Oriental occult science), and she
resolved to seek that land of mystic enchantment and
penetrate northward into
the very lairs of the mystic Brotherhood. She wrote to an
Englishman, whom she
had met two years before in Germany, and who shared her
interest, to join them
in the West Indies. Upon his arrival the three pilgrims took
boat for India. The
party arrived at Bombay, via the Cape to Ceylon, near the
end of 1852. Madame's
own headstrong bent to enter Tibet via Nepal in search of
her Mahatmas broke up
the trio. She made the hazardous attempt to enter the
Forbidden Land of the
Lamas, but was prevented, she always believed, by the
opposition of a British
resident then in Nepal. Baffled, she returned to Southern
India, thence to Java
and Singapore and thence back to England.
But that country's embroilment in the Crimean War distressed
her sense of
patriotism, and about the end of the year 1853 she passed
over again to America,
going to New York, thence west to Chicago and on to the Far
West across the
Rockies with emigrant caravans. She halted a while at San
Francisco. Her stay in
America this time lengthened to nearly two years. She then
once more made her
way to India, via Japan and the Straits. She reached
Calcutta in 1855.
In India, in 1856, she was joined at Lahore by a German
gentleman who had been
requested by Col. Hahn to find his errant daughter. With him
and his two
companions Madame Blavatsky traveled through Kashmir to Leli
in Ladakh in
company with a Tatar Shaman, who was instrumental in
procuring for the party the
favor of witnessing some magic rites performed at a Buddhist
monastery. Her
experiences there she afterwards described in Isis,3 and
they are too long for
recital here. One of the exploits of the old priest was the
psychic vivification
of the body of an infant who (not yet of walking age) arose
and spoke eloquently
of spiritual things and prophesied, while dominated by a
magnetic current from
the operator.4 The psychic feat performed by her Shaman
guide was even more
wonderful. Yielding to Madame's importunities at a time when
she was herself in
grave danger, he released himself from his body as he lay in
a tent, and carried
a message to a friend of the young woman residing in
Wallachia, from whom he
brought back an answer.5 Shortly after this incident,
perceiving their danger,
the Shaman, by mental telepathy apprised a friendly tribal
ruler of their
situation, and a band of twenty-five horsemen was sent to
rescue the two
travelers, finding them in a locality to which they had been
directed by their
chief, yet of which the two had had no possible earthly
means of informing him.
Safely out of the Tibetan wilds-and she came out by roads
and passes of which
she had no previous knowledge-she was directed by her occult
guardian to leave
the country, shortly before the troubles which began in
1857. In 1858 she was
once more in Europe.
By this time her name had accumulated some renown, and it
was freely mentioned
in connection with both the low and the high life of Vienna,
Berlin, Warsaw, and
Paris. Her alleged absence from these places at the times
throws doubt on the
accuracy of these reports. After spending some months in
France and Germany upon
her return from India, she finally ended her self-imposed
exile and rejoined her
own people in Russia, arriving at Pskoff, about 180 miles
from St. Petersburg,.31
in the midst of a family wedding party on Christmas night.
Her reason for going
to Pskoff was that her sister Vera-then Madame Yahontoff-was
at the time
residing there with the family of her late husband, son of
the General N. A.
Yahontoff, Marechal de Noblesse of the place.
Soon afterwards, early in 1859, Madame Blavatsky and her
sister went to reside
with their father in a country house belonging to Madame Yahontoff.
This was at
Rougodevo, about 200 versts from St. Petersburg. About a
year later, in the
spring of 1860, both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus
on a visit to their
grandparents, whom they had not seen for years. It was a
three weeks' journey
from Moscow to Tiflis, in coach with post horses. Madame
Blavatsky remained in
Tiflis less than two years, adding another year of roaming
about in Imeretia,
Georgia, and Mingrelia, exciting the superstitious
sensibilities of the
inhabitants of the Mingrelia region to an inordinate degree
and gaining a
reputation for witchcraft and sorcery. She was there taken
down with a wasting
fever, which an old army surgeon could make nothing of; but
he had the good
sense to send her off to Tiflis to her friends. Recovering
after a time, she
left the Caucasus and went to Italy. Here, the legend goes,
she, with some other
European women, volunteered to serve with Garibaldi and was
under severe fire in
the battle of Mentana.6
The four years intervening between 1863 and 1867 seem to
have been spent in
European travel, though the records are barren of accurate
detail. But the three
from 1867 to 1870 were passed in the East,7 and were quite
fruitful and
eventful.
In 1870 she returned from the Orient, coming through the
newly opened Suez
Canal, spent a short time in Piraeus, and from there took
passage for Spezzia on
board a Greek vessel. On this voyage she was one of the very
few saved from
death in a terrible catastrophe, the vessel being blown to
bits by an explosion
of gunpowder and fireworks in the cargo. Rescued with only
the clothes they
wore, the survivors were looked after by the Greek
government, which forwarded
them to various destinations. Madame Blavatsky went to
Alexandria and to Cairo,
tarrying at the latter place until money reached her from
Russia.
While awaiting the arrival of funds, the energetic woman
determined to found a
Sociιtι Spirite, for the investigation of mediums and
manifestations according
to the theories and philosophy of Allen Kardec. The latter
was an outstanding
advocate of Spiritualistic philosophy on the Continent. He
had correlated the
commonly reported spiritistic exploits to a more profound
and involved theory of
cosmic evolution and a higher spirituality in man. His work,
Life and Destiny,
written under the pseudonym of Leon Denis, unfolded a
comprehensive system of
spiritual truth identical in its main features with
Theosophy itself. His
interests were not primarily in spiritistic phenomena for
themselves, but for
what they revealed of the inner spiritual capacities and
potentialities of our
evolving Psyche.
It required but a few weeks to disgust Madame Blavatsky with
her fruitless
undertaking. Some French female spiritists, whom she had
drafted for service as
mediums, in lack of better, proved to be adventuresses
following in the wake of
M. de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen, and they
concluded by stealing the
Society's funds. She wrote home:
"To wind up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot
by a madman-a Greek, who
had been present at the only two public sιances we held, and
got possessed I
suppose, by some vile spook."8.32
She terminated the affairs of her Sociιtι and went to Bulak,
where she renewed
her previous acquaintance with the old Copt. His unconcealed
interest in his
visitor aroused some slanderous talk about her. Disgusted
with the growing
gossip, she went home by way of Palestine, making a side
voyage to Palmyra and
other ruins, and meeting there some Russian friends. At the
end of 1872 she
returned without warning to her family, then at Odessa.
In 1873 she again abandoned her home, and Paris was her
first objective. She
stayed there with a cousin, Nicholas Hahn, for two months.
While in Paris she
was directed by her "spiritual overseers" to visit
the United States, "where she
would meet a man by the name of Olcott," with whom she
was to undertake an
important enterprise. Obedient to her orders she arrived at
New York on July
7th, 1873.9 She was for a time practically without funds;
actually, as Col.
Olcott avers, "in the most dismal want, having . . . to
boil her coffee-dregs
over and over again for lack of pence for buying a fresh
supply; and to keep off
starvation, at last had to work with her needle for a maker
of cravats."10
During this interval she was lodged in a wretched tenement
house in the East
Side, and made cravats for a kindly old Jew, whose help at
this time she never
forgot.11 In her squalid quarters she was sought out by a
veteran journalist,
Miss Anna Ballard, in search of copy for a Russian story.
She received, in late
October, a legacy from the estate of her father, who had
died early in that
month. A draft of one thousand rubles was first sent her,
and later the entire
sum bequeathed to her. Then in affluence she moved to better
quarters, first to
Union Square, then to East 16th Street, then to Irving
Place. But her money did
not abide in her keeping long. In regard to the sources of
her income after her
patrimony had been flung generously to the winds, we are
told, upon Col.
Olcott's pledged honor, that both his and her wants, after
the organization of
the Theosophical Society, were frequently provided for by
the occult
ministrations of the Masters. He claims that during the many
years of their
joint campaigns for Theosophy, especially in India, the
treasure-chest at
headquarters, after having been depleted, would be found
supplied with funds
from unknown sources. Shopping one day in New York with
Colonel, she made
purchases to the amount of about fifty dollars. He paid the
bills. On returning
home she thrust some banknotes into his hand, saying:
"There are your fifty
dollars." He is certain she had no money of her own,
and no visitor had come in
from whom she could have borrowed. Once during this period
she created the
duplicate of a thousand dollar note while it was held in the
hand of the Hon.
John L. O'Sullivan, formerly Ambassador to Portugal; but it
faded away during
the two following days. Its serial number was identical with
that of its
prototype. The knowledge that financial help would come at
need, however, did
not dispose Madame Blavatsky to relax her effort toward her
own sustenance.12
During this time, and for nearly all the remainder of her
life, the Russian
noblewoman spent large stretches of her time in writing
occult, mystic, and
scientific articles for Russian periodicals. This
constituted her main source of
income. Col. Olcott states that her Russian articles were so
highly prized that
"the conductor of the most important of their reviews
actually besought her to
write constantly for it, on terms as high as they gave
Turgenev."13
A chronicle of her life during this epoch may not omit her
second marriage,
which proved ill-fated at the first. It came about as follows:
A Mr. B., a
Russian subject, learning of her psychic gifts through Col.
Olcott, asked the
Colonel to arrange for him a meeting with his countrywoman.
He proceeded to fall
into a profound state of admiration for Madame Blavatsky,
which deepened though
he was persistently rebuffed, and he finally threatened to
take his life unless
she would relent. He proclaimed his motives to be only
protective, and expressly
waived a husband's claims to the privileges of married life.
In what appears to
have been madness or some sort of desperation, she agreed
finally, on these.33
terms, to be his wife. Even then it was specified that she
retain her own name
and be free from all restraint, for the sake of her work. A
Unitarian clergyman
married them in Philadelphia, and they lived for some few
months in a house on
Sansom Street. When taken to task by her friend Olcott, she
explained that it
was a misfortune to which she was doomed by an inexorable
Karma; that it was a
punishment to her for a streak of pride which was hindering
her spiritual
development; but that it would result in no harm to the
young man. The husband
forgot his earlier protestations of Platonic detachment, and
became an
importunate lover. Madame Blavatsky developed a dangerous
illness at this time
as a result of a fall upon an icy sidewalk in New York the
previous winter, and
her knee became so violently inflamed that a partial
mortification of the leg
set in. The physician declared that nothing but instant
amputation could save
her life; but she discarded his advice, called upon that
source of help which
had come to her in a number of exigencies, recovered
immediately and left her
husband's "bed and board." He, after some months
of waiting, saw her obduracy
and procured a divorce on the ground of desertion.14
During the latter part of her stay in New York she and Col.
Olcott took an
apartment of seven rooms at the corner of 47th Street and
8th Avenue, which came
to be called "The Lamasery," in jocular reference
to her Tibetan connections.
"The Lamasery" became a social and intellectual
center during her residence
there. Col. Olcott says:
". . . her mirthfulness, epigrammatic wit, brilliance
of conversation, careless
friendliness to those she liked . . ., her fund of anecdote,
and, chiefest
attraction to most of her callers, her amazing psychical
phenomena, made the
'Lamasery' the most attractive salon of the metropolis from
1876 to the close of
1878."15
Madame spent her day-hours in writing, her custom for years;
and held open house
for visitors in the evening. There was always discussion of
one or another
aspect of occult philosophy, in which she naturally took the
commanding part.
She would pour out an endless flow of argument and
supporting data, augmented at
favorable times by a sudden exhibition of magical power. She
seemed tireless in
her psychic energy.
Several persons have left good word-pictures of her. Col.
Olcott graphically
describes her appearance upon the occasion of their first
meeting in the old
Eddy farmhouse, in Vermont, where they both came in '74 to
study the "spooks."
Col. Olcott had been on the scene for some time, as a
representative of the New
York Daily Graphic, when Madame Blavatsky arrived. He was
struck by her general
appearance, and he contrived to introduce himself to her
through the medium of a
gallant offer of a light for her cigarette.
"It was a massive Kalmuc face," he writes,
"contrasting in its suggestion of
power, culture and impressiveness, as strangely with the
commonplace visages
about the room, as her red garment did with the gray and
white tones of the wall
and the woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the
guests. All sorts of
cranky people were continually coming and going at Eddy's,
and it only struck
me, on seeing this eccentric lady, that this was but one
more of the sort.
Pausing on the doorstep I whispered to Kappes, 'Good
Gracious! Look at that
specimen, will you!'"16
In her autobiography the Princess Helene von Racowitza makes
some interesting
references to Madame Blavatsky, whom she knew intimately..34
"I discovered in her the most remarkable being (for one
hardly dare designate
her with the simple name of woman). She gave me new life; .
. . she brought new
interest into my existence. Regarding her personal
appearance, the head, which
rose from the dark flowing garments, was immensely
characteristic, although far
more ugly than beautiful. A true Russian type, a short thick
nose, prominent
cheek bones, a small clever mobile mouth, with little fine
teeth, brown and very
curly hair, and almost like that of a negro's; a sallow
complexion, but a pair
of eyes the like of which I had never seen; pale blue, grey
as water, but with a
glance deep and penetrating, and as compelling as if it
beheld the inner heart
of things. Sometimes they held an expression as though fixed
on something afar,
high and immeasurably above all earthly things. She always
wore long dark
flowing garments and had ideally beautiful hands.
"But how shall I attempt to describe . . . her being,
her power, her abilities
and her character? She was a combination of the most
heterogeneous qualities. By
all she was considered as a sort of Cagliostro or St.
Germain. She conversed
with equal facility in Russian, English, French, German,
Italian and certain
dialects of Hindustani; yet she lacked all positive
knowledge-even the most
superficial European school training.
"In matters of social life she . . . joined an
irresistible charm in
conversation, that comprised chiefly an intense
comprehension of everything
noble and great, with the most original and often coarse
humor, a mode of
expression which was the comical despair of prudish
Anglo-Saxons.
"Her contempt for and rebellion against all social
conventions made her appear
sometimes even coarser than was her wont, and she hated and
fought conventional
lying with real Don Quixotic courage. But whoever approached
her in poverty or
rags, hungry and needing comfort, could be sure to find in
her a warm heart and
an open hand. . . . No drop of wine, beer or fermented
liquors ever passed her
lips, and she had a most fanatical hatred of everything
intoxicating. Her
hospitality was genuinely Oriental. She placed everything
she possessed at the
disposal of her friends."17
Mr. J. Ranson Bridges, a none too kindly critic, who had
considerable
correspondence with her from 1888 till her death, says:
"Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon the life and
work of this woman, her
place in history will be unique. There was a Titanic display
of strength in
everything she did. The storms that raged within her were
cyclones. Those
exposed to them often felt, with Solovyoff, that if there
were holy and sage
Mahatmas, they could not remain holy and sage and have
anything to do with
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Yet she could be as tender and
sympathetic as any
mother. Her mastery of some natures seemed complete. . . .
To these disciples
she was the greatest thaumaturgist known to the world since
the time of
Christ."18
In a moment of gayety she once dashed off the following
description of herself:
"An old woman, whether 40, 50, 60 or 90 years old, it
matters not; an old woman
whose Kalmuco-Buddhisto-Tartaric features, even in youth,
never made her appear
pretty; a woman whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners, and
masculine habits are
enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of
fashionable society out
of her wits."19
For all her psychic insight, she seemed unable to protect
herself against those
who fawned upon her, cultivated her society, and then repaid
her by desertion or.35
slander. She was open to any one who professed occult
interest, and she readily
took up with many such persons who later became bitter
critics.
Much ado was made by delicate ladies in her day of her
cigarette addiction. Her
evident masculinity, her lack of many of the niceties which
ladies commonly
affect, her scorn of conventions, her failure to put on the
airs of a woman of
noble rank, her occasional coarse language, and her violence
of temper over
petty things, have led many people to infer that the message
that she brought
could not have been pure and lofty.
Theosophists put forward an explanation of her irascibility
and nervous
instability, in a theory which must sound exotic to the
uninitiated. They state
that when she studied in Tibet under her Masters, and was
initiated into the
mysteries of their occult knowledge, they extricated, by
processes in which they
are alleged to be adepts, one of her astral bodies and
retained it so as to be
able to maintain, through an etheric radio vibration, a
constant line of
communication with her in any part of the world. This left
her in a state of
unstable equilibrium nervously, and rendered her subject to
a greater degree of
irritation than would normally have been the case.
Madame Blavatsky's life story, covered now in its outward
phases, is not
complete without consideration of that remarkable series of
psychic phenomena
which give inner meaning to her career. In and of themselves
they form a
narrative of great interest, on a par with the legendary
lives of many other
saints. The story is a long one; a complete record of all
her wonder-working, as
told in the Theosophic accounts, would alone fill the space
of this volume. A
digest of this material must be made here, though a critical
examination is, as
said above, not attempted.
When, in 1858, she returned home from her first exile of ten
years, Spiritualism
was just looming on the horizon of Europe. Nothing seems to
be mentioned in the
several biographical sketches, of her coming in contact with
the sweep of the
Spiritualistic wave that was at full height in the United
States during the
early fifties, when she passed through that country. However
the case may be,
she returned home in 1858 with her occult powers already
fully developed, and
proceeded to make frequent display of them.
At Pskoff, with her sister's husband's family, the
Yahontoff's, raps, knocks,
and other sounds occurred incessantly; furniture moved
without any contact;
particles changed their weight; and either absent living
folk or the dead were
seen both by herself and her relatives many times. Wherever
the young woman went
"things" happened. Laughing at the continued
recurrence of these mysterious
activities, she averred to her sisters that she could make
them cease or
redouble their frequency and power, by the sheer force of
her own will.20 The
psychic demonstrations supposedly took place in entire
independence of her
coφperation, but she could, if she chose, interject her will
and assume control.
Her sister, Madame de Jelihowsky, remembers Helena's
laughing when addressed as
a medium, and assuring her friends that "she was no
medium, but only a mediator
between mortals and beings we know nothing about."21
The reports of her
wonderful exploits following her arrival at Pskoff in 1858
threw that town into
a swirl of excited gossip. There was a great deal of
fashionable company at the
Yahontoff home in those days. Madame's presence itself
attracted many. Seldom
did any of the numerous callers go away unsatisfied, for to
their inquiries the
raps gave answer, often long ones in different languages,
some of which were not
in Madame Blavatsky's repertoire. The willing
"medium" was subjected to every
kind of test, to which she submitted gracefully..36
An instance of her power was her mystification of her own
brother, Leonide de
Hahn. A company was gathered in the drawing room, and
Leonide was walking
leisurely about, unconcerned with the stunts which his
gifted sister was
producing for the diversion of the visitors. He stopped
behind the girl's chair
just as some one was telling how magicians change the
avoirdupois of objects.
"And you mean to say that you can do it?" he asked
his sister ironically.
"Mediums can, and I have done it occasionally,"
was the reply. "But would you
try?" some one asked. "I will try, but promise
nothing." Hereupon one of the
young men advanced and lifted a light chess table with great
ease. Madame then
told them to leave it alone and stand back. She was not near
it herself. In the
expectant silence that ensued she merely looked intently at
the table. Then she
invited the same young man who had just lifted it to do so
again. He tried, with
great assurance of his ability, but could not stir the table
an inch. He grew
red with the effort, but without avail. The brother,
thinking that his sister
had arranged the play with his friend as a little joke on
him, now advanced.
"May I also try?" he asked her. "Please do,
my dear," she laughed. He seized the
table and struggled; whereat his smile vanished. Try as he
would, his effort was
futile. Others tried it with the same result. After a while
Helena urged Leonide
to try it once more. He lifted it now with no effort.
A few months later, Madame Blavatsky, her father and sister,
having left Pskoff
and lodging at a hotel in St. Petersburg, were visited by
two old friends of
Col. Hahn, both now much interested in Spiritualism. After
witnessing some of
Helena's performances, the two guests expressed great
surprise at the father's
continued apathy toward his daughter's abilities. After some
bantering they
began to insist that he should at least consent to an
experiment, before denying
the importance of the phenomena. They suggested that he
retire to an adjoining
room, write a word on a slip of paper, conceal it and see if
his daughter could
persuade the raps to reveal it. The old gentleman consented,
believing he could
discredit the foolish nonsense, as he termed it, once for all.
He retired, wrote
the word and returned, venturing in his confidence the
assertion that if this
experiment were successful, he "would believe in the
devil, undines, sorcerers,
and witches, in the whole paraphernalia, in short, of old
woman's superstitions;
and you may prepare to offer me as an inmate of a lunatic
asylum."22 He went on
with his solitaire in a corner, while the friends took note
of the raps now
beginning. The younger sister was repeating the alphabet,
the raps sounding at
the desired letter; one of the visitors marked it down.
Madame Blavatsky did
nothing apparently. By this means one single word was got,
but it seemed so
grotesque and meaningless that a sense of failure filled the
minds of the
experimenters. Questioning whether that one word was the
entire message, the
raps sounded "Yes-yes-yes!" The younger girl then
turned to her father and told
them that they had got but one word. "Well what is
it?" he demanded.
"Zaοchik."23 It was a sight indeed to witness the
change that came over the old
man's face at hearing this one word. He became deadly pale.
Adjusting his
spectacles with a trembling hand, he stretched it out,
saying, "Let me see it!
Hand it over. Is it really so?" He took the slips of
paper and read in a very
agitated voice "Zaοchik." Yes; Zaοchik; so it is.
How very strange!" Taking out
of his pocket the paper he had written on in the next room,
he handed it in
silence to his daughter and guests. On it they found he had
written: "What was
the name of my favorite horse which I rode during my first
Turkish campaign?"
And lower down, in parenthesis, the answer,--"
Zaοchik."
The old Colonel, now assured there was more than child's
play in his daughter's
pretensions, rushed into the region of phenomena with great
zeal. He did not
matriculate at an asylum; instead he set Helena to work
investigating his family
tree. He was stimulated to this inquiry by having received
the date of a certain
event in his ancestral history of several hundred years before,
which he.37
verified by reference to old documents. Scores of historical
events connected
with his family were now given him; names unheard of,
relationships unknown,
positions held, marriages, deaths; and all were found on
painstaking research to
have been correct in every item! All this information was
given rapidly and
unhesitatingly. The investigation lasted for months.
In the spring of 1858 both sisters were living with their
father in the country-house
in a village belonging to Mme. Yahontoff. In consequence of
a murder
committed near their property, the Superintendent of the
District Police passed
through the villages and stopped at their house to make some
inquiries. No one
in the village knew who had committed the crime. During tea,
as all were sitting
around the table, the raps came, and there were the usual
disturbances around
the room. Col. Hahn suggested to the Superintendent that he
had better try his
daughter's invisible helpers for information. He laughed
incredulously. He had
heard of "spirits," he said, but was derisive of
their ability to give
information in "a real case." This scorn of her
powers caused the young girl to
desire to humble the arrogant officer. She turned fiercely
upon him. "And
suppose I prove to you the contrary?" she defiantly
asked him. "Then," he
answered, "I would resign my office and offer it to
you, Madame, or, better
still, I would strongly urge the authorities to place you at
the head of the
Secret Police Department." "Now look here,
Captain," she said indignantly. "I do
not like meddling in such dirty business and helping you
detectives. Yet, since
you defy me, let my father say over the alphabet and you put
down the letters
and record what will be rapped out. My presence is not
needed for this, and with
your permission I shall even leave the room." She went
out, with a book, to
read. The inquiry in the next room produced the name of the
murderer, the fact
that he had crossed over into the next district and was then
hiding in the hay
in the loft of a peasant, Andrew Vlassof, in the village of
Oreshkino. Further
information was elicited to the effect that the murderer was
an old soldier on
leave; he was drunk and had quarreled with his victim. The
murder was not
premeditated; rather a misfortune than a crime. The
Superintendent rushed
precipitately out of the house and drove off to Oreshkino,
more than 30 miles
distant. A letter came by courier the following morning
saying that everything
given by the raps had proved absolutely correct. This
incident produced a great
uproar in the district and Madame's work was viewed in a
more serious light. Her
family, however, had some difficulty convincing the more
distant authorities
that they had no natural means of being familiar with the
crime.
One evening while all sat in the dining room, loud chords of
music were struck
on the closed piano in the next room, visible to all through
the open door. On
another occasion Madame's tobacco pouch, her box of matches
and her handkerchief
came rushing to her through the air, upon a mere look from
her. Many visitors to
her apartment in later years witnessed this same procedure.
Again, one evening,
all lights were suddenly extinguished, an amazing noise was
heard, and though a
match was struck in a moment, all the heavy furniture was
found overturned on
the floor. The locked piano played a loud march. The
manifestations taking place
when the home circle was unmixed with visitors were usually
of the most
pronounced character.
Sometimes there were alleged communications from the spirits
of historical
personages, not the inevitable Napoleon and Cleopatra, but
Socrates, Cicero and
Martin Luther, and they ranged from great power and vigor of
thought to almost
flippant silliness. Some from the shade of the Russian poet
Pushkin were quite
beautiful..38
While the family read aloud the Memoirs of Catherine
Romanovna Dashkoff, they
were interrupted many times by the alleged spirit of the
authoress herself,
interjecting remarks, making additions, offering
explanations and refutations.
In the early part of 1859 the sister, Madame Jelihowsky,
inherited a country
village from the estate of her late husband at Rougodevo,
and there the family,
including Helena, went to reside for a period. No one in the
party had ever
known any of the previous occupants of the estate. Soon
after settling down in
the old mansion, Madame discerned the shades of half a dozen
of the former
inhabitants in one of the unoccupied wings and described
them to her sister.
Seeking out several old servants, she found that every one
of the wraiths could
be identified and named by the aged domestics. The young
woman's description of
one man was that he had long finger nails, like a
Chinaman's. The servant stated
that one of the former residents had contracted a disease in
Lithuania, which
renders cutting of the nails a certain road to death through
bleeding.
Sometimes the other members of the family would converse
with the rapping forces
without disturbing Helena at all. The forces played more
strongly than every, it
seemed, when Madame was asleep or sick. A physician once
attending her illness
was almost frightened away by the noises and moving
furniture in the bedroom.
A terrible illness befell her near the end of the stay at
Rougodevo. Years
before, her relatives believed during her solitary travels
over the steppes of
Asia, she had received a wound. This wound reopened
occasionally, and then she
suffered intense agony, which lasted three or four days and
then the wound would
heal as suddenly as it had opened, and her illness would
vanish. On one occasion
a physician was called; but he proved of little use, because
the prodigious
phenomena which he witnessed left him almost powerless to
act. Having examined
the wound, the patient being prostrated and unconscious, he
saw a large dark
hand between his own and the wound he was about to dress.
The wound was near the
heart, and the hand moved back and forth between the neck
and the waist. To make
the apparition worse, there came in the room a terrific
noise, from ceiling,
floor, windows, and furniture, so that the poor man begged
not to be left alone
in the room with the patient.
In the spring of 1860 the two sisters left Rougodevo for a
visit to their
grandparents in the south of Russia, and during the long
slow journey many
incidents took place. At one station, where a surly,
half-drunken station-master
refused to lend them a fresh relay of horses, and there was
no fit room for
their accommodation over the night, Helena terrified him
into sense and reason
by whispering into his ear some strange secret of his, which
he believed no one
knew and which it was to his interest to keep hidden.
At Jadonsk, where a halt was made, they attended a church
service, where the
prelate, the famous and learned Isidore, who had known them
in childhood,
recognized them and invited them to visit him at the
Metropolitan's house. He
received them when they came with great kindliness; but
hardly had they entered
the drawing room than a terrible hubbub of noise and raps
burst forth in every
direction. Every piece of furniture strained and cracked,
rocked and thumped.
The women were confused by this demoniacal demonstration in
the presence of the
amazed Churchman, though the culprit in the case was hardly
able to repress her
sense of humor. But the priest saw the embarrassment of his
guests and
understood the cause of it. He inquired which of the two
women possessed such
strange potencies. He was told. Then he asked permission to
put to her invisible
guide a mental question. She assented. His query, a serious
one, received an
instant reply, precise and to the point; and he was so
struck with it all that
he detained his visitors for over three hours. He continued
his conversation.39
with the unseen presences and paid unstinted tribute to
their seeming all-knowledge.
His farewell words to his gifted guest were:
"As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift
you are possessed of . .
. for it was surely given to you for some purpose, and you
could not be held
responsible for it. Quite the reverse! For if you but use it
with discrimination
you will be enabled to do much good to your
fellow-creatures."
Her occult powers grew at this period to their full
development, and she seemed
to have completed the subjection of every phase of
manifestation to her own
volitional control. Her fame throughout the Caucasus
increased, breeding both
hostility and admiration. She had risen above the necessity
of resorting to the
slow process of raps, and read people's states and gave them
answers through her
own clairvoyance. She seemed able, she said, to see a cloud
around people in
whose luminous substance their thoughts took visible form.
The purely sporadic
phenomena were dying away.
Her illness at the end of her stay in Mingrelia has already
been noted. A
psychic experience of unusual nature even for her, through
which she passed
during this severe sickness, seems to have marked a definite
epoch in her occult
development. She apparently acquired the ability from that
time to step out of
her physical body, investigate distant scenes or events, and
bring back reports
to her normal consciousness. Sometimes she felt herself as
now one person, H. P.
Blavatsky, and again some one else. Returning to her own
personality she could
remember herself as the other character, but while
functioning as the other
person she could not remember herself as Madame Blavatsky.
She later wrote of
these experiences: "I was in another far-off country, a
totally different
individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with
my actual life."24
The sickness, prostrated her and appears to have brought a
crisis in her inner
life. She herself felt that she had barely escaped the fate
that she afterwards
spoke of as befalling so many mediums. She wrote in a letter
to a relative:
"The last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is
gone, to return no more. I
am cleansed and purified of that dreadful attraction to
myself of stray spooks
and ethereal affinities. I am free, free, thanks to Those
whom I now bless at
every hour of my life." (Her Guardians in Tibet.)25
Madame Jelihowsky writes too:
"After her extraordinary and protracted illness at
Tiflis she seemed to defy and
subject the manifestations entirely to her will. In short,
it is the firm belief
of all that there where a less strong nature would have been
surely wrecked in
the struggle, her indomitable will found somehow or other
the means of
subjecting the world of the invisibles-to the denizens of
which she had ever
refused the name of 'spirits' and souls-to her own
control."26
As a sequel to this experience her conception of a great and
definite mission in
the world formulated itself before her vision. It is seen to
provide the motive
for her abortive enterprise in Cairo in 1871; it is again
seen to be operative
in her propagation of Theosophy in 1875. It will be
considered more at length in
the discussion of her connection with American Spiritualism.
By 1871 her power in certain phases had been greatly
enhanced. She was able,
merely by looking fixedly at objects, to set them in motion.
In an illustrated
paper of the time there was a story of her by a gentleman,
who met her with some
friends in a hotel at Alexandria. After dinner he engaged
her in a long
discussion. Before them stood a little tea tray, on which
the waiter had placed.40
a bottle of liquor, some wine, a wine glass and a tumbler.
As the gentleman
raised the glass to his lips it broke to pieces in his
hands. Madame Blavatsky
laughed at the occurrence, remarking that she hated liquor
and could hardly
tolerate those who drank. He knew the glass was thick and
strong, but, to draw
her out, declared it must have been an accidental crumbling
of a thin glass in
his grasp. "What do you bet I do not do it again?"
she flashed at him. He then
half-filled another tumbler. In his own words:
"But no sooner had the glass touched my lips than I
felt it shattered between my
fingers, and my hand bled, wounded by a broken piece in my
instinctive act of
grasping the tumbler together when I felt myself losing hold
of it."
"Entre les lθvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une
grande distance," she
observed, and left the room, laughing in his face "most
outrageously."27
Another gentleman, a Russian, who encountered her in Egypt,
sent the most
enthusiastic letters to his friends about her wonders.
"She is a marvel, an unfathomable mystery. That which
she produces is simply
phenomenal; and without believing any more in spirits than I
ever did, I am
ready to believe in witchcraft. If it is after all but
jugglery, then we have in
Madame Blavatsky a woman who beats all the Boscos and Robert
Houdin's of the
country by her address. . . . Once I showed her a closed
medallion containing a
portrait of one person and the hair of another, an object
which I had had in my
possession but a few months, which was made at Moscow, and
of which very few
knew, and she told me without touching it: 'Oh! It is your
godmother's portrait
and your cousin's hair. Both are dead,' and she proceeded
forthwith to describe
them, as though she had both before her eyes. How could she
know?"28
At Cairo she wrote her sister Vera that she had seen the
astral forms of two of
the family's domestics and chided her sister for not having
written her about
their death during her absence. She described the hospital
in which one of them
had passed away, and other circumstances connected with
their history since she
had last been in touch with them. It was only afterwards
that she learned that
when her letter from Egypt was received by Madame
Jelihowsky, the latter was
herself not aware of the death of the two servants. Upon
inquiry she found every
circumstance in relation to their late years and their death
precisely as Helena
had depicted it.
Upon Madame Blavatsky's arrival in America her open espousal
of the cause of
Theosophy was prefaced by much work done in and for the
Spiritualistic movement.
Col. Olcott has brought out the fact that the phenomena
taking place at the Eddy
farmhouse in Vermont in 1873 changed character quite
decidedly the day she
entered the household. Up to the time of her appearance on
the scene the figures
that had shown themselves were either Red Indians or
Americans or Europeans
related to some one present. But on the first evening of her
stay spirits of
other nationalities came up. A Georgian servant body from
the Caucasus, a
Mussulman merchant from Tiflis, a Russian peasant girl, and
others, appeared.
Later a Kurdish cavalier and a devilish-looking Negro
sorcerer from Africa
joined the motley group.
From the Vermont homestead Madame Blavatsky went to New
York, where Col. Olcott
joined her shortly afterwards. Rappings and messages were
much in evidence
during this sojourn in the metropolis, the disembodied
intelligence in the
background purporting to be one "John King," a
name familiar to all spiritists
for many years before. The spirit finally declared itself to
be the earth-haunting
soul of Sir Henry Morgan, famous buccaneer, and so showed
itself to the.41
sight of Col. Olcott during the sιances with the Holmes
mediums some months
later in Philadelphia. From him as ostensible source came
many messages both
grave and gay.
All the while Madame Blavatsky posed as a Spiritualist and
mingled in the Holmes
sιances in Philadelphia for the purpose of lending some of
her own power to the
rather feeble demonstrations effected by Mr. and Mrs. Holmes
to bolster their
reputation in the face of Robert Dale Owen's public
denunciation of them as
cheats. She says that on one occasion Mrs. Holmes was
herself frightened at the
real appearance of spirits summoned by herself.
One of the first indications Col. Olcott was to have of the
interest of her
distant sages in his own career was shown during the time
that Madame Blavatsky
was in Philadelphia. At her urgent invitation the Colonel
determined quite
suddenly to run over and spend a few days with her. On the
evening of the same
day on which he left his address at the Philadelphia Post
Office the postman
brought him several letters from widely distant places, all
bearing the stamp of
the sending station, but none that of the receiving station,
New York. They were
addressed to him at his New York office address, yet had
come straight to him at
Philadelphia without passing through the New York office.
And nobody in New York
knew his Philadelphia address. He took them himself from the
postman's hand; so
they could not have been tampered with by his occult friend.
But the marvel did
not end there. Upon opening them he found inside each
something written in the
same handwriting as that in letters he had received in New
York from the
Masters, the writing having been made either in the margins
or on any other
space left blank by the writers.
"These were the precursors of a whole series of those
phenomenal surprises
during the fortnight or so that I spent in Philadelphia. I
had many, and no
letter of the lot bore the New York stamp, though all were
addressed to me at my
office in that city."29
The series of vivid phenomena which took place during the
Philadelphia visit may
be listed briefly as follows:
1.-Col. Olcott purchased a note-book in which to record the
rap messages. On
taking it out of the store wrapper he found inside the first
cover: "John King,
Henry de Morgan, his book, 4th of the fourth month in A.D.
1875." And underneath
this was a whole pictorial design of Rosicrucian symbols,
the word Fate, the
name Helen, the phrase "Way of Providence," a
monogram, a pair of compasses, and
various letters and signs. No one had touched it since its
purchase at the
stationary shop.
2.-Madame Blavatsky caused a photograph on the wall to
disappear suddenly from
its frame and give place to a sketch portrait of "John
King" while a spectator
was looking at it.
3.-Col. Olcott had bought a dozen unhemmed towels. As his
companion was no
seamstress, he bantered her to let an elemental do the
hemstitching on the lot.
She told him to put the towels, needle and thread inside a
bookcase, which had
glass doors curtained with green silk. He did so. After
twenty minutes she
announced that the job was finished. He found them actually,
if crudely, hemmed.
It was four P.M., and no other persons were in the room.
4.-Madame Blavatsky once suddenly disappeared from the
Colonel's sight, could
not be seen for a period, and then as suddenly reappeared.
She could not explain
to him how she did it..42
5.-The increase overnight in the length of her hair, of
about four to five
inches, and its later recession to its normal length.
6.-The projection of a drawing of a man's head on the
ceiling above the
Colonel's head, where he had seen nothing a minute before.
7.-The precipitation by "John King," in answer to
the Colonel's challenge to
duplicate a letter he had in his pocket, of the said
duplicate, correct in every
word.
8.-The precipitation of a letter into the traveling bag of a
Mr. B. while on the
train, the letter not having been packed there originally.
9.-The same Mr. B. begged Madame Blavatsky to create for him
a portrait of his
deceased grandmother. She went to the window, put a blank
piece of paper against
the pane, and handed it to him in a moment with the portrait
of a little old
woman with many wrinkles and a large wart, which Mr. B.
declared a perfect
likeness of his ancestor.
10.-The actual production by an Italian artist, through
"his control of the
spirits of the air," during one evening of entirely
clear sky, of a small shower
of rain, sufficient to wet the sidewalks. Previously Madame
Blavatsky had
created a butterfly, following a similar production by the Italian
visitor.
11.-The materialization by Madame Blavatsky of a heavy gold
ring in the heart of
a rose which had been "created" shortly before by
Mrs. Thayer, a medium whom
Col. Olcott was testing with a view to sending her to Russia
for experimentation
at a university there.
12.-The Colonel's own beard grew in one night from his chin
down to his chest.30
After the return from Philadelphia psychic events continued
with great frequency
at the apartments in New York. In December of 1875, Madame
Blavatsky, having
invited a challenge to reproduce the portrait of the
Chevalier Louis, reputed
Adept author of Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten's Art Magic,
rubbed her hand over a
sheet of paper and the desired photograph appeared on the
under side. She had
laid the bare sheet on the surface of the table. Col. Olcott
had the opportunity
nine years later of comparing this reproduction with the
original photograph of
the Chevalier Louis, and found the likeness perfect, yet the
lines would not
meet precisely when the one was superimposed on the other.
It could not have
been a lithographic reproduction.
Early in 1878, Mr. O'Sullivan asked Madame Blavatsky for one
of a chaplet of
large wooden beads which she was wearing. She placed one in
a bowl and produced
the bowlful of them.
For the same gentleman in plain sight of several people, she
triplicated a
beautiful handkerchief which he had admired.
To amuse the child of a caller, an English Spiritualist, one
day she produced a
large toy sheep mounted on wheels. Col. Olcott claimed it
had not been there a
moment before.
On Christmas eve of that year when she and the Colonel, went
to his sister's
apartment, Madame expressed regret that she had brought
nothing for the
youngsters. But saying, "Wait a minute," she took
her bunch of keys from her.43
pocket, clutched three of them together in one hand, and a
moment later showed
the party a large iron whistle hanging on the ring instead
of the three keys.
Col. Olcott had to get three new keys from a locksmith.
Another time to placate a little girl Madame promised her
"a nice present," and
indicated to Col. Olcott that he should take it out of their
luggage bag in the
hall. He unlocked the already stuffed bag and immediately on
top was a
harmonica, or glass piano, about fifteen inches by four in
size, with its cork
mallet beside it. Colonel had himself packed the bag, having
to use all his
strength to close it, had reopened it on the train, and
there was not a moment
when his friend could have slipped an object of such size
into it.
It was in New York at this epoch that she took Col. Olcott's
large signet ring,
rubbed it in her hands and presently handed him his original
and another like it
except that the new one was mounted with a dark green
bloodstone, whereas the
original was set with a red carnelian. That ring she wore
till her death, and it
has since been the valued possession of Mrs. Annie Besant.
Once, in Boston, Madame walked through the streets in a
pelting rain and reached
her lodgings without the trace of dampness or mud on her
dress or shoes.
Similarly the Colonel found a handsome velvet-covered chair
entirely dry, not
even damp, after being left out all night in a driving rain.
One time when the two were talking about three members of
the Colonel's family,
a crash was heard in the next room. Rushing in he found that
the photograph of
one of the three had been turned face inward, the large
water-color picture of
another lay smashed on the floor, while the photograph of
the third was
unmolested.
Madame once made instantly a copy of a scurrilous letter
received by the Colonel
from a person who had done him an injustice. Again she
duplicated a five-page
letter from the eminent Spiritualist, W. Stainton Moses.
There was not time for
the receipt of the letter until its duplication for any one
to have copied it.
The second sheets were copies, but not strictly duplicate,
as the lines would
not match when the two were placed together and held before
the light.
At "The Lamasery" she produced an entire set of
watercolors, which Mr. W. Q.
Judge needed in making an Egyptian drawing. Next he needed
some gold paint,
whereupon she took a brass key, scraped it over the bottom
of an empty saucer,
and found the required paint instantly. The brass key was
not consumed in the
process, but was needed, she explained, to help aggregate
the atomic material
for the gold color.
When Olcott stated one evening that he would like to hear
from one of the Adepts
(in India) upon a certain subject, Madame told him to write
his questions, seal
them in an envelope, and place it where he could watch it.
He did so, putting it
behind the clock on the mantel, with one end projecting in
plain view. The two
went on talking for an hour, when she announced that the
answer had come. He
drew out his own envelope, the seal unbroken, found inside
it his own letter,
and inside that the Mahatma's answer in the script familiar
to him, written on a
sheet of green paper, such as he had not had in the house.
Through her agency the portrait of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses
was precipitated
on satin. It was a distinct likeness, and the head was rayed
around with
spiculae of light. It was surrounded with rolling clouds of
vapor, his astral
vehicle..44
Olcott, Judge and a Dr. Marquette one evening asked her to
produce the portrait
of a particular Hindu Yogi on some stationery of the Lotus
Club that the Colonel
had brought home that same evening. She scraped some lead
from a pencil on a
half sheet of the paper, laid the other half-sheet over it,
placed them between
her hands, and showed the result. The likeness to the
original could not be
verified, but it was pronounced by Le Clear, the noted
portrait painter, to be
one "that no living artist within his knowledge could
have produced."
Once Col. Olcott desired a picture of his Guru, or Hindu
teacher, as yet unseen
by him, and Madame essayed to have it painted through the
hand of a French
artist, M. Herisse. The artist's only instructions were that
his subject was a
Hindu. Madame concentrated, and he painted. The features,
finished in an hour,
were afterwards vouched for by Col. Olcott as being the
likeness of his Guru,
whom he met years later.
The Colonel testified to having seen Madame Blavatsky's
astral form in a New
York street while she was in Philadelphia; also that of a friend
of his then in
the South; again that of one of the Adepts, then in Asia, in
an American railway
train and on a steamboat. He stated that he took from the
hand of another
Mahatma at Jummu a telegram from H.P.B.31 who was in Madras,
the messenger
vanishing a moment later; and that he, H.P.B. and Damodar, a
young Hindu devotee
of hers, were greeted by one of these Teachers one evening
in India. But the
occurrence of this kind which he regarded as the most
striking, affecting as it
did his whole future career, happened at the close of one of
his busy days, when
his evening's toil with the composition of Isis was
finished. He had retired to
his own room and was reading, the room door locked. Suddenly
he perceived a
white radiance at his side and turning saw towering above
him the great stature
of an Oriental, clad in white garments and wearing a
head-cloth of amber-striped
fabric, hand-embroidered in yellow floss silk.
"Long raven hair hung from under his turban to the
shoulders; his black beard,
parted vertically on the chin in the Rajput fashion, was
twisted up at the ends
and carried over the ears; his eyes were alive with
soul-fire; eyes which were
at once benignant and piercing in glance; the eyes of a
mentor and judge, but
softened by the love of a father who gazes on a son needing
counsel and
guidance. He was so grand a man, so imbued with the majesty
of moral strength,
so luminously spiritual, so evidently above average
humanity, that I felt
abashed in his presence, and bowed my head and bent my knee
as one does before a
god or a god-like personage. A hand was laid lightly on my
head, a sweet though
strong voice bade me be seated, and when I raised my eyes
the Presence was
seated in the other chair beyond the table. He told me that
he had come at the
crisis when I needed him; that my actions had brought me to
this point; that it
lay with me alone whether he and I should meet often in this
life as coworkers
for the good of mankind; that a great work was to be done
for humanity and I had
the right to share in it if I wished; that a mysterious tie,
not now to be
explained to me, had drawn my colleague and myself together;
a tie which could
not be broken, however strained it might be at
times."32
Then he arose and reading the Colonel's sudden but unexpressed
wish that he
might leave behind him some token of his visit, he untwisted
the fehta from his
head, laid it on the table, saluted benignantly and was
gone.
Many a time, according to the Colonel's version, they were
regaled with most
exquisite music, or single bell sounds, coming from anywhere
in the room and
softly dying away..45
Olcott tells of the deposit of one thousand dollars to his
bank account by a
person described by the bank clerk as a Hindu, while he
(Olcott) was absent from
the city for two months on business which he had undertaken
at the behest of the
Master through H.P.B. He had told her that his errand would
cost him about five
hundred dollars per month through his neglect of his
business for the time.
In 1878 the Countess Paschkoff brought to light an adventure
which she had had
years before while traveling with Madame Blavatsky in the
Libanus. The two women
encountered each other in the desert and camped together one
night near the
river Orontes. Nearby stood a great monument on the border
of the village. The
Countess asked Madame to tell her the history of the
monument. At night the
thaumaturgist built a fire, drew a circle about it and
repeated several
"spells." Soon balls of white flame appeared on
the monument, then from a cloud
of vapor emerged the spirit of the person to whom it had
been dedicated. "Who
are you?" asked the woman. "I am Hiero, one of the
priests of the temple," said
the voice of the spirit.
He then showed them the temple in the midst of a vast city.
Then the image
vanished and the priest with it.
To round out the story of her phenomena it is necessary to
relate with the
utmost brevity the incidents of the kind that transpired
from the time of the
departure from America to India at the end of 1878 until the
latter days of her
life. This narrative will include occurrences taking place
in India, France,
Germany, and England.
It was in India that the so-called Mahatma Letters were
precipitated, upon which
the basic structure of Theosophy is seen to rest. Mr. A. P.
Sinnett, British
journalist, editor of "The Pioneer," living in
India, is the main authority for
the events of the Indian period in Madame Blavatsky's life.
During the first visit of six weeks to Mr. Sinnett's home at
Allahabad there
were comparatively few incidents, apart from raps. A
convincing exploit of her
power was granted, however, for one evening while the party
was sitting in the
large hall of the house of the Maharajah of Vizianagaram at
Benares, three or
four large cut roses fell from the ceiling. The ceiling was
bare and the room
well lighted.
About the beginning of September 1880 she visited the
Sinnetts at their home in
Simla. Here some more striking incidents took place. During
an evening walk with
Mrs. Sinnett to a neighboring hilltop, Madame, in response
to a suddenly-expressed
wish of her companion, obtained for her a little note from
one of the
"Brothers." Madame had torn off a blank corner of
a sheet of a letter received
that day and held it in her hand for the Master's use. It
disappeared. Then Mrs.
Sinnett was asked where she would like the paper to
reappear. She whimsically
pointed up into a tree a little to one side. Clambering up
into the branches she
found the same little corner of pink paper sticking on a
sharp twig, now
containing a brief message and signed by some Tibetan
characters.
A little later the most spectacular of the marvels said to
have been performed
by the "Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood"
took place. A picnic party to
the woods some miles distant was planned one morning and six
persons prepared to
set off. Lunches were packed for six, but a seventh person
unexpectedly joined
the group at the moment of departure. As the luncheon was
unpacked for the
noontide meal, there was a shortage of a coffee cup and
saucer. Some one
laughingly suggested that Madame should materialize an extra
set. Madame
Blavatsky held a moment's mental communication with one of
her distant Brothers.46
and then indicated a particular spot, covered with grass,
weeds, and shrubbery.
A gentleman of the party, with a knife, undertook to dig at
the spot. A little
persistence brought him shortly to the rim of a white
object, which proved to be
a cup, and close to it was a saucer, both of the design
matching the other six
brought along from the Sinnett cupboard. The plant roots
around the China pieces
were manifestly undisturbed by recent digging such as would
have been necessary
if they had been "planted" in anticipation of
their being needed. Moreover, when
the party reached home and Mrs. Sinnett counted their supply
of cups and saucers
of that design, the new ones were found to be additional to
their previous
stock. And none of that design could have been purchased in
Simla.33
Before this same party had disbanded it was permitted to
witness another feat of
equal strangeness. The gentleman who had dug up the buried
pottery was so
impressed that he decided then and there to join the
Theosophical Society. As
Col. Olcott, President of the Society, was in the party, all
that was needed was
the usual parchment diploma. Madame Blavatsky agreed to ask
the Master to
produce such a document for them. In a moment all were told
to search in the
underbrush. It was soon found and used in the induction
ceremony.
This eventful picnic brought forth still another wonder.
Every one of the water bottles brought along had been
emptied when the need for
more coffee arose. The water in a neighborhood stream was
unfit. A servant, sent
across the fields to obtain some at a brewery, stupidly
returned without any. In
the dilemma Madame Blavatsky took one of the empty bottles,
placed it in one of
the baskets, and in a moment took it out filled with good
water.
Some days later the famous "brooch" incident
occurred. The Sinnett party had
gone up the hill to spend an evening with Mr. and Mrs. A. O.
Hume, who were
likewise much interested in the Blavatskian theories. Eleven
persons were seated
around the table and some one hinted at the possibility of a
psychic exploit.
Madame appeared disinclined, but suddenly gave a sign that
the Master was
himself present. Then she asked Mrs. Hume if there was
anything in particular
that she wished to have. Mrs. Hume thought of an old brooch
which her mother had
given her long ago and which had been lost. Neither she nor
Mr. Hume had thought
of it for years. She described it, saying it contained a
lock of hair. The party
was told to search for it in the garden at a certain spot;
and there it was
found. Mrs. Hume testified that it was the lost brooch, or
one indistinguishable
from it.
According to the statements of Alice Gordon, a visitor at
the Sinnett home,
Madame Blavatsky rolled a cigarette, and projected it
ethereally to the house of
a Mrs. O'Meara in another part of Simla, in advance of Miss
Gordon's going
thither. To identify it she tore off a small corner of the
wrapper jaggedly, and
gave it to Miss Gordon. The latter found it at the other
home and the corner
piece matched.
Captain P. J. Maitland recites a "cigarette"
incident which occurred in Mr.
Sinnett's drawing room. Madame took two cigarette papers,
with a pencil drew
several parallel lines clear across the face of both, then
tore off across these
lines a piece of the end of each paper and handed the short
end pieces to
Captain Maitland; then she rolled cigarettes out of the two
larger portions,
moistened them on her tongue, and caused them to disappear
from her hands. The
Captain was told he would find one on the piano and the
other on a bracket. He
found them there, still moist along the "seam,"
and unrolling them found that
the ragged edges of the torn sections and the pencil lines
exactly matched..47
Some days later came the "pillow incident." Mr.
Sinnett had the impression that
he had been in communication with the Master one night.
During the course of an
outing to a nearby hill the following day, Madame Blavatsky
turned to him (he
had not mentioned his experience to her) and asked him where
he would like some
evidence of the Master's visit to him to appear. Thinking to
choose a most
unlikely place, he thought of the inside of a cushion
against which one of the
ladies was leaning. Then he changed to another. Cutting the
latter open, they
found among the feathers, inside two cloth casings, a little
note in the now
familiar Mahatma script, in the writing on which were the
phrases-"the
difficulty you spoke of last night" and
"corresponding through-pillows!" While
he was reading this his wife discovered a brooch in the
feathers. It was one
which she had left at home.
Perhaps it was these cigarette feats which assured Madame
Blavatsky that she now
had sufficient power to dispatch a long letter to her
Mahatma mentors. Mr.
Sinnett first suggested the idea to her, and her success in
that first attempt
was the beginning of one of the most eventful and unique
correspondences in the
world's history. It began his exchange of letters with the
Master Koot Hoomi Lal
Singh (abbreviated usually to K.H.), on which Theosophy so
largely rests.
On several telegrams received by Mr. Sinnett were snatches
of writing in K.H.'s
hand speaking of events that transpired after the telegram
had been sent.
Replies were received a number of times in less time than it
would have taken
Madame Blavatsky to write them (instantaneously in a few
cases), yet they dealt
in specific detail with the material in his own missives.
More than once his
unexpressed doubts and queries were treated. In many cases
his own letter in a
sealed envelope would remain in sight and within a very
short interval (thirty
seconds in one instance) be found to contain the distant
Master's reply, folded
inside his own sheets, with an appropriate answer,--the seal
not even having
been broken. Sometimes he would place his letter in plain
view on the table, and
shortly it would be gone. For a time when the Master K.H.
was called away to
other business, Mr. Sinnett continued to receive
communications from the brother
Adept, Master Morya, while Madame Blavatsky was hundreds of
miles away. They
continued in the distant absence of both H.P.B. and Col.
Olcott. And not only
were such letters received by Mr. Sinnett, and Mr. Hume, but
by other persons as
well. The list includes Damodar K. Mavalankar; Ramaswamy, an
educated English-speaking
native of Southern India in Government service; Dharbagiri
Nath; Mohini
Chatterji; and Bhavani Rao. Dr. Hόbbe-Schleiden received a
missive of the kind
later on a railway train in Germany. Mr. Sinnett would
frequently find the
letters on the inside of his locked desk drawers or would
see them drop upon his
desk. Their production was attended with all manner of
remarkable circumstances.
Then there was the notable episode of the transmission by
the Master of a mental
message to a Mr. Eglinton, a Spiritualist, on board a
vessel, the Vega, far out
at sea, and the instantaneous transmission of the letter's
response, written on
board ship, to some of his friends in India, the whole thing
done in accordance
with an arrangement made by letter to Mr. Sinnett by the
Adept two days before.
This incident has a certain importance from the fact that
the Master had said in
the preliminary letter that he would visit Mr. Eglinton on
the ship on a certain
night, impress him with the untenability of the general
Spiritualistic
hypothesis regarding communications, and if possible lead
him to a change of
mind on the point. Mr. Eglinton's reply recorded the visit
of the Mahatma on the
ship and admitted the desirability of a change to the
Theosophic theory of the
existence of the Brothers.
An interesting
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER of events in the sojourn of the two Theosophic leaders in
India is that of the thousands of healings made by Col.
Olcott, who states that.48
he was given the power by the Overlords of his activities
for a limited time
with a special object in view. He is said to have cured some
eight thousand
Hindus of various ailments by a sort of "laying on of
hands." Like Christ he
felt "virtue" go out of his body until exhaustion
ensued; and he stated that he
was instructed to recharge his nervous depletion by sitting
with his back
against the base of a pine tree.
In 1885 Madame Blavatsky herself experienced the healing
touch of her Masters
when she was ordered to meet them in the flesh north of
Darjeeling. Going north
on this errand, she was in the utmost despondency and near
the point of death.
After two days spent with the Adepts she emerged with
physical health and morale
restored, her dynamic self once more.
The last sheaf of "miracles" takes us from India
to France, Germany, Belgium,
and England. In Paris, in 1884, her rooms were the resort of
many people who
came if haply they might get sight of a marvel, her
thaumaturgic fame being now
world-wide. A Prof. Thurmann reported that in his presence
she filled the air of
the room with musical sounds, from a variety of instruments.
She demonstrated
that darkness was not necessary for such manifestations.
Madame Jelihowsky is authority for the account of the appearance
and
disappearance of her sister's picture in a medallion
containing only the small
photograph of K.H.
A most baffling display of Madame's gifts took place in the
reception room of
the Paris Theosophical Society on the morning of June 11th,
1884. Madame
Jelihowsky, Col. Olcott, W. Q. Judge, V. Solovyoff and two
others were present
and attested the bona fide nature of the incident in a
public letter. In sight
of all a servant took a letter from the postman and brought
it directly to
Madame Jelihowsky. It was addressed to a lady, a relative of
Madame Blavatsky,
who was then visiting her, and came from another relative in
Russia. Madame
Blavatsky, seeing that it was a family letter, remarked that
she would like to
know its contents. Her sister ventured the suggestion that
she read it before it
was opened. Helena held the letter against her forehead and
proceeded to read
aloud and then write down what she said were the contents.
Then, to demonstrate
her power further, she declared that she would underscore
her own name, wherever
it occurred within the letter, in red crayon, and would
precipitate in red a
double interlaced triangle, or "Solomon's Seal,"
beneath the signature. When the
addressee opened the letter, not only was H.P.B.'s version
of its contents
correct to the word, but the underscoring of her name and
the monogram in red
were found, and oddly enough, the wavering in several of the
straight lines in
the triangle, as drawn first by Madame Blavatsky outside the
letter, were
precisely matched by the red triangle inside. Postmarks
indicated it had
actually come from Russia.34
While at Elberfeld, Germany, with her hospitable
benefactress, Madame Gebhard,
some of the usual manifestations were in evidence. Mr. Rudolph
Gebhard, a son,
recounts several of them. One was the receipt of a letter
from one of the
Masters, giving intelligence about an absent member of the
household, found to
be correct.
The Countess Constance Wachtmeister, who became Madame
Blavatsky's guardian
angel, domestically speaking, during the years of the
composition of The Secret
Doctrine in Germany and Belgium, has printed her account of
a number of
extraordinary occurrences of the period. She speaks of a
succession of raps in
H.P.B.'s sleeping room when there was special need of her
Guardians' care. She
also tells of the thrice-relighted lamp at the sleeper's
bedside, she herself.49
having twice extinguished it. She tells of her receiving a
letter from the
Master, inside the store-wrapper of a bar of soap which she
had just purchased
at a drug store.
It was under the Countess Wachtmeister's notice that there
occurred the last of
Madame Blavatsky's "miraculous" restorations to
health. She had suffered for
years from a dropsical or renal affection, which in those
latter days had
progressed to such an alarming stage that her highly
competent physicians at one
crisis were convinced that she could not survive a certain
night. The great work
she was writing was far from completed; the Countess was
heart-broken to think
that, after all, that heroic career was to be cut off just
before the
consummation of its labors for humanity; and she spent the
night in grief and
despair. Arising in the morning she found Madame at her
desk, busy as before at
her task. She had been revivified and restored during the
night, and would not
say how.
The Countess records the occasion of an intercession of the
Masters in her own
affairs, on behalf of their messenger. At her home in Sweden,
while she was
packing her trunks in preparation for a journey to some
relatives in Italy, she
clairaudiently heard a voice, which told her to place in her
trunk a certain
note-book of her containing notes on the Bohemian Tarot and
the Kabala. It was
not a printed volume but a collection of quotations from the
above works in her
own hand. Surprised, and not knowing the possible
significance of the order, she
nevertheless complied. Before reaching Italy she suddenly
changed her plans, and
postponed the trip to Italy and visited Madame Blavatsky in
Belgium instead.
Upon arriving and shortly after greeting her beloved friend,
she was startled to
hear Madame say to her that her Master had informed her that
her guest was
bringing her a book dealing with the Tarot and the Kabala,
of which she was to
make use in the writing of The Secret Doctrine.
This must end, but does not by any means complete, the
chronicle of "the
Blavatsky phenomena." The list, long as it has become,
is but a fragment of the
whole. Without the narration of these phenomena an adequate
impression of the
personality and the legend back of them could not be given.
Moreover they belong
in any study of Theosophy, and their significance in
relation to the principles
of the cult is perhaps far other than casual or incidental.
If her own display
of such powers was made as a demonstration of what man is
destined to become
capable of achieving in his interior evolution, these things
are to be regarded
as an integral part of her message. They became, apparently
in spite of herself,
a part of her program and furnished a considerable impetus
toward its
advancement. Theosophy itself re-publishes the theory of
man's inherent theurgic
capacity. It can hardly be taken as an anomaly or as an
irrelevant circumstance,
then, that its founder should have been regarded as
exemplifying the possession
of that capacity in her own person..50
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER IV
FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY
Nothing seems more certain than that Madame Blavatsky had no
definite idea of
what the finished product was to be when she gave the
initial impulse to the
movement. She knew the general direction in which it would
have to move and also
many objectives which it would have to seek. In her mind
there had been
assembled a body of material of a unique sort. She had spent
many years of her
novitiate in moving from continent to continent1 in search
of data having to do
with a widespread tradition as to the existence of a hidden
knowledge and secret
cultivation of man's higher psychic and spiritual
capabilities. Supposedly the
wielder of unusual abilities in this line, she was driven by
the very character
of her endowment to seek for the deeper science which
pertained to the evolution
of such gifts, and at the same time a philosophy of life in
general which would
explain their hidden significance. To establish, first, the
reality of such
phenomena, and then to construct a system that would furnish
the possibility of
understanding this mystifying segment of experience, was
unquestionably the main
drive of her mental interests in early middle life. Already
well equipped to be
the exponent of the higher psychological and theurgic
science, she aimed to
become its philosophic expounder.
But the philosophy Madame Blavatsky was to give forth could
not be oriented with
the science of the universe as then generally conceived. To
make her message
intelligible she was forced to reconstruct the whole picture
of the cosmos. She
had to frame a universe in which her doctrine would be seen
to have relevance
and into whose total order it would fall with perfect
articulation. She felt
sure that she had in her possession an array of vital facts,
but she could not
at once discern the total implication of those facts for the
cosmos which
explained them, and which in turn they tended to explain. We
may feel certain
that her ideas grow more systematic from stage to stage,
whether indeed they
were the product of her own unaided intellect, or whether
she but transcribed
the knowledge and wisdom of more learned living men, the
Mahatmas, as the
Theosophic legend has it.
Guided by the character of the situation in which she found
herself, and also,
it seems, by the advice of her Master, she chose to ride
into her new venture
upon the crest of the Spiritualist waves. America was chosen
to be the hatching
center of Theosophy because it was at the time the heart and
center of the
Spiritualist movement. It was felt that Theosophy would
elicit a quick response
from persons already imbued with spiritistic ideas. It
cannot be disputed that
Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott worked with the
Spiritualists for a brief
period and launched the Society from within the ranks of the
cult. As a matter
of fact it was the work of this pair of Theosophists that
gave Spiritualism a
fresh impetus in this country after a period of waning
interest about 1874. Col.
Olcott's letters in the Daily Graphic about the Eddy
phenomena, and his book,.51
People From the Other World, did much to revive popular
discussion, and his
colleague's show of new manifestations was giving
encouragement to
Spiritualists. But the Russian noblewoman suddenly
disappointed the expectations
thus engendered by assigning a different interpretation and
much lower value to
the phenomena. Before this she and Col. Olcott not only lent
moral support to a
leading Spiritualist journal, The Spiritual Scientist, of
Boston, edited by Mr.
E. Gerry Brown, but contributed its leading editorials and
even advanced it
funds.
The motive behind their participation in a movement which
they so soon abandoned
has been misconstrued.
Spiritualists, and the public generally, assumed that of
course their activity
indicated that they subscribed to the usual tenets of the
sect; that they
accepted the phenomena for what they purported to be, i.e.,
actual
communications in all cases from the spirits of former human
beings. However
true this estimate may have been as appertaining to Col.
Olcott-and even to him
it had a fast diminishing applicability after his meeting
with H.P.B.-it was
certainly not true of her. Madame Blavatsky shortly became
the mark of
Spiritualistic attack for the falsification of her original
attitude toward the
movement and her presumed betrayal of the cause.
Her ill-timed attempt to launch her Sociιtι Spirite at Cairo
in 1871
foreshadowed her true spirit and motive in this activity. It
is evident to the
student of her life that she felt a contempt for the banal
type of sιance
phenomena. She so expressed herself in writing from Cairo at
the time. She felt
that while these things were real and largely genuine, they
were insignificant
in the view that took in a larger field of psychic power.
But the higher
phenomena of that more important science were known to few,
whereas she was
constantly encountering interest in the other type. If she
was to introduce a
nobler psychism to the world, she seemed driven to resort to
the method of
picking up people who were absorbed in the lower modes of
the spiritual science
and leading them on into the higher. She would gather a
nucleus of the best
Spiritualists and go forward with them to the higher
Spiritualism. To win their
confidence in herself, it was necessary for her to start at
their level, to make
a gesture of friendliness toward their work and a show of
interest in it.
Her own words may bring light to the situation:
"As it is I have only done my duty; first, toward
Spiritualism, that I have
defended as well as I could from the attacks of imposture
under the too
transparent mask of science; then towards two helpless
slandered mediums [the
Holmeses]. . . . But I am obliged to confess that I really
do not believe in
having done any good-to Spiritualism itself. . . . It is
with a profound sadness
in my heart that I acknowledge this fact, for I begin to
think there is no help
for it. For over fifteen years have I fought my battle for
the blessed truth;
have traveled and preached it-though I never was born for a
lecturer-from the
snow-covered tops of the Caucasian Mountains, as well as
from the sandy valleys
of the Nile. I have proved the truth of it practically and
by persuasion. For
the sake of Spiritualism2 I have left my home, an easy life
amongst a civilized
society, and have become a wanderer upon the face of the
earth. I had already
seen my hopes realized, beyond my most sanguine
expectations, when my unlucky
star brought me to America. Knowing this country to be the
cradle of modern
Spiritualism, I came over here from France with feelings not
unlike those of a
Mohammedan approaching the birthplace of his
Prophet."3.52
After her death Col. Olcott found among her papers a
memorandum in her hand
entitled "Important Note." In it she wrote:
"Yes, I am sorry to say that I had to identify myself,
during that shameful
exposure of the Holmes mediums, with the Spiritualists. I
had to save the
situation, for I was sent from Paris to America on purpose
to prove the
phenomena and their reality, and show the fallacy of the
spiritualistic theory
of spirits. But how could I do it best? I did not want
people at large to know
that I could produce the same thing at will. I had received
orders to the
contrary, and yet I had to keep alive the reality, the
genuineness and the
possibility of such phenomena in the hearts of those who
from Materialists had
turned Spiritualists, but now, owing to the exposure of
several mediums, fell
back again and returned to their scepticism. . . . Did I do
wrong? The world is
not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult
Science; let them first
assure themselves that there are beings in an invisible
world, whether 'spirits'
of the dead or elementals; and that there are hidden powers
in man which are
capable of making a god of him on earth."
"When I am dead and gone people will, perhaps,
appreciate my disinterested
motives. I have pledged my word to help people on to Truth
while living and I
will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me; let some
call me a medium and a
Spiritualist, others an impostor. The day will come when
posterity will learn to
know me better."4
As long as it was a question of the actuality of the
phenomena, she was alert in
defence of Spiritualism. In the Daily Graphic of November.
13, 1874, she printed
one of her very first newspaper contributions in America,
replying to an attack
of a Dr. George M. Beard, an electropathic physician of New
York, on the
validity of the Eddy phenomena. She went so far in this
article as to wager five
hundred dollars that he could not make good his boast that
he could imitate the
form-apparitions "with three dollars' worth of
drapery." She refers to herself
as a Spiritualist. In her first letter to Co. Olcott after
leaving Vermont she
wrote as follows:
"I speak to you as a true friend to yourself and as a
Spiritualist anxious to
save Spiritualism from a danger."5
A little later she even mentioned to her friend that the
outburst of mediumistic
phenomena had been caused by the Brotherhood of Adepts as an
evolutionary
agency. She could, of course, not believe the whole trend
maleficent if it was
in the slightest degree engineered by her trusted
Confederates. She added later,
however, that the Master soon realized the impracticability
of using the
Spiritualistic movement as a channel for the dissemination
of the deeper occult
science and instructed her to cease her advocacy of it.
Along with her reply and challenge to Beard in the Graphic
there was printed an
outline of her biography from notes furnished by herself. In
it she says:
"In 1858 I returned to Paris and made the acquaintance
of Daniel Home, the
Spiritualist. . . . Home converted me to Spiritualism. . . .
After this I went
to Russia. I converted my father to Spiritualism."
Elsewhere she speaks of Spiritualism as "our
belief" and "our cause." In an
article in the Spiritual Scientist of March eighth she uses
the phrases "the
divine truth of our faith (Spiritualism) and the teachings
of our invisible
guardians (the spirits of the circles).".53
Madame Blavatsky's apparently double-faced attitude toward
Spiritualism is
reflected in the posture of most Theosophists toward the
same subject today.
When Spiritualism, as a demonstration of the possibility and
actuality of
spiritistic phenomena, is attacked by materialists or
unbelievers, they at once
bristle in its defense; when it is a question of the
reliability and value of
the messages, or the dignity and wholesomeness of the sιance
procedure, they
respond negatively.
It is the opinion of some Theosophic leaders, like Sinnett
and Olcott, that
Madame Blavatsky made a mistake in affiliating herself
actively with
Spiritualism, inasmuch as the early group of Spiritualistic
members of her
Theosophic Society, as soon as they were apprised of her
true attitude, fell
away, and the incipient movement was beset with much
ill-feeling.
The controversy between the two schools is important, since
Madame Blavatsky's
dissent from Spiritualistic theory gave rise to her first
attempts to formulate
Theosophy. To justify her defection from the movement she
was led to enunciate
at least some of the major postulates and principles of her
higher science.
Theosophy was born in this labor. It is necessary,
therefore, to go into the
issues involved in the perennial controversy.
To Spiritualists the phenomena which purported to be
communications from the
still-living spirits of former human beings with those on
the earth plane, were
assumed to be genuinely what they seemed. As such they were
believed to be far
the most significant data in man's religious life, as
furnishing a practically
irrefutable demonstration of the truth of the soul's
immortality. They were
regarded as the central fact in any attempt to formulate an
adequate religious
philosophy. Spiritualists therefore elevated this assumption
to the place of
supreme importance and made everything else secondary.
Not so Madame Blavatsky. To her the Spiritistic phenomena
were but a meagre part
of a larger whole. Furthermore-and this was her chief point
of divergence,--she
vigorously protested their being what Spiritualists asserted
them to be. They
were not at all genuine messages from genuine spirits of
earth people-or were
not so in the vast majority of cases. And besides, they were
not any more
"divine" or "spiritual" than ordinary
human utterances, and were even in large
part impish and elfin, when not downright demoniacal. They
were mostly, she
said, the mere "shells" or wraiths of the dead,
animated not by their former
souls but by sprightly roving nature-spirits or elementals,
if nothing worse,--
such, for instance, as the lowest and most besotted type of
human spirit that
was held close to earth by fiendish sensuality or hate.
There were plenty of
these, she affirmed, in the lower astral plane watching for
opportunities to
vampirize negative human beings. The souls of average
well-meaning or of saintly
people are not within human reach in the sιance. They have
gone on into realms
of higher purity, more etherealized being, and can not
easily descend into the
heavy atmosphere of the near-earth plane to give messages
about that investment
or that journey westward or that health condition that needs
attention. At best
it is only on rare and exceptional occasions that the real
intelligence of a
disembodied mortal comes "through." There are many
types of living entities in
various realms of nature, other than human souls. Certain of
these rove the
astral plane and take pleasure in playing upon gullible
people who sit gravely
in the dark. Most of the occurrences at circles are so much
astral plane
rubbish; and, besides, sιance-mongering is dangerous to all
concerned and
eventually ruinous to the medium. If the mediums, she
bantered, were really in
the hands of benevolent "guides" and
"controls," why do not the latter shield
their protιgιs from the wrecked health and insanity so
frequent among them? She.54
affirmed that she had never seen a medium who had not
developed scrofula or a
phthisical affection.6
Inevitably the Spiritualists were stunned by their one-time
champion's sudden
and amazed reversal of her position. A campaign of abuse and
condemnation began
in their ranks, echoes of which are still heard at times.
What Madame Blavatsky aimed to do was to teach that the
phenomena of true
Spiritualism bore not the faintest resemblance to those of
table-tipping. True
Spiritualism should envisage the phenomena of the divine
spirit of man in their
higher manifestations, the cultivation of which by the
ancients and the East has
given man his most sacred science and most vital knowledge.
She wrote in a
letter to her sister about 1875 that one of the purposes of
her new Society was
"to show certain fallacies of the Spiritualist. If we
are anything we are
Spiritualists, only not in the modern American fashion, but
in that of the
ancient Alexandria with its Theodidaktoi, Hypatias and
Porphyries."7 In one of
the letters of Mahatma K.H. to A. P. Sinnett the Master
writes:
"It was H.P.B. who, acting under the orders of Atrya
(one whom you do not know)
was the first to explain in the 'Spiritualist' the
difference between psyche and
nous, nefesh and ruach-Soul and Spirit. She had to bring the
whole arsenal of
proofs with her quotations from Paul to Plato, from Plutarch
and James before
the Spiritualists admitted that the Theosophists were
right."8
In 1879 she wrote in the magazine which she had just founded
in India:
"We can never know how much of the mediumistic
phenomena we must attribute to
the disembodied until it is settled how much can be done by
the embodied human
soul, and to blind but active powers at work within those
regions which are yet
unexplored by science."9
In other words Spiritualism should be a culture of the
spirits of the living,
not a commerce with the souls of the dead. To live the life
of the immortal
spirit while here in the body is true Spiritualism. We can
readily see that with
such a purpose in mind she would not be long in discerning
that the
Spiritualistic enterprise could not be used to promulgate
the type of spiritual
philosophy that she had learned in the East.
When this conclusion had fully ripened in her mind, she
began the undisguised
formulation of her own independent teaching. Her new
philosophy was in effect
tantamount to an attack on Spiritualism, and that from a
quarter from which
Spiritualism was not prepared to repulse an assault. It came
not from the old
arch-enemy, materialistic scepticism, but from a source
which admitted the
authenticity of the phenomena.
Her first aim was to set forth the misconceptions under
which the Spiritualists
labored. She says:
"We believe that few of those physical phenomena which
are genuine are caused by
disembodied human spirits."10
Again she "ventures the prediction that unless
Spiritualists set about the study
of ancient philosophy so as to learn to discriminate between
spirits and to
guard themselves against the baser sort, twenty-five years
will not elapse
before they will have to fly to the Romish communion to
escape these 'guides'
and 'controls' that they have fondled so long. The signs of
this catastrophe
already exhibit themselves."11.55
Again she declares that
"it is not mediums, real, true and genuine mediums,
that we would ever blame,
but their patrons, the Spiritualists."12
In Isis Unveiled she rebukes Spiritualists for claiming that
the Bible is full
of phenomena just like those of modern mediums. She asserts
that there were
Spiritualistic phenomena in the Bible, but not
mediumistic,--a distinction of
great import to her. She declares that the ancients could
tell the difference
between mediums who harbored good spirits and those haunted
by evil ones, and
branded the latter type unclean, while reverencing the
former. She positively
asserts that "pure spirits will not and cannot show
themselves objectively;
those that do are not pure spirits, but elementary and
impure. Woe to the medium
that falls a prey to such!"13
Col. Olcott quotes her as writing:
"Spiritualism in the hands of an Adept becomes Magic,
for he is learned in the
art of blending together the laws of the universe without
breaking any of them.
. . . In the hands of an inexperienced medium Spiritualism
becomes unconscious
sorcery, for . . . he opens, unknown to himself, a door of
communication between
the two worlds through which emerges the blind forces of
nature lurking in the
Astral Light, as well as good and bad spirits."14
In The Key to Theosophy15 written near the end of her life,
she states what may
be assumed to be the official Theosophic attitude on the
subject:
"We assert that the spirits of the dead cannot return
to earth-save in rare and
exceptional cases-nor do they communicate with men except by
entirely subjective
means. That which does appear objectively is often the
phantom of the ex-physical
man. But in psychic and, so to say, 'spiritual' Spiritualism
we do
believe most decidedly."16
One of her most vigorous expressions upon this issue occurs
toward the end of
Isis.
According to Olcott the Hon. A. Aksakoff, eminent Russian
Professor, states that
"Prince A. Dolgorouki, the great authority on
mesmerism, has written me that he
has ascertained that spirits which play the most prominent
part at sιances are
elementaries,--gnomes, etc. His clairvoyants have seen them
and describe them
thus."
"The totally insufficient theory of the constant agency
of disembodied human
spirits in the production of Spiritualistic phenomena has
been the bane of the
Cause. A thousand mortifying rebuffs have failed to open
their reason or
intuition to the truth. Ignoring the teachings of the past,
they have discovered
no substitute. We offer them philosophical deduction instead
of unverifiable
hypothesis, scientific analysis and demonstration instead of
indiscriminating
faith. Occult philosophy gives them the means of meeting the
reasonable
requirements of science, and frees them from the humiliating
necessity to accept
the oracular teachings of 'intelligences' which, as a rule,
have less
intelligence than a child at school. So based and so
strengthened, modern
phenomena would be in a position to command the attention
and enforce the
respect of those who carry with them public opinion. Without
invoking such help
Spiritualism must continue to vegetate, equally repulsed-not
without cause-both.56
by science and theologians. In its modern aspect it is
neither science, a
religion nor a philosophy."17
In 1876, the writing of Isis was committing her to a stand
which made further
compromise with Spiritualism impossible. Her statement
reveals what she would
ostensibly have labored to do for that movement had it shown
itself more plastic
in her hands. She would have striven to buttress the
phenomena with a more
historical interpretation and a more respectable rationale.
In this context, however, the following passage from Isis is
a bit difficult to
understand. It seems to make a gesture of conciliation
toward the Spiritualistic
hypothesis after all. She says:
"We are far from believing that all the spirits that
communicate at circles are
of the classes called 'Elemental' and 'Elementary.'
Many-especially among those
who control the medium subjectively to speak, write and
otherwise act in various
ways-are human disembodied spirits. Whether the majority of
such spirits are
good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the
medium, much on the
circle present, and a good deal on the intensity and object
of their purpose. .
. . But in any case, human spirits can never materialize
themselves in propria
persona."18
If this seems a recession from her consistent position
elsewhere assumed, it
must be remembered that she never, before or after, denied
the possibility of
the occasional descent of genuinely human spirits "in
rare and exceptional
cases."
Before 1875 she wrote to her sister that there was a law
that sporadically,
though periodically, the souls of the dead invade the realms
of the living in an
epidemic, and the intensity of the epidemic depends on the
welcome they receive.
She called it "the law of forced post-mortem
assimilation." She elsewhere
clarified this idea by the statement that our spirits here
and now, being of
kindred nature with the totality of spirit energy about us,
unconsciously draw
certain vibrations or currents from the life of the
supermundane entities,
whether we know it or not. Through this wireless circuit we
sometimes drink in
emanations, radiations, thought effluvia, so to speak, from
the disembodied
lives. The veil, she affirmed, between the two worlds is so
thin that
unsuspected messages are constantly passing across the
divide, which is not
spatial but only a discrepancy in receiving sets. And both
she and the Master
K.H. stated that during normal sleep we are en rapport with
our loved ones as
much as our hearts could desire. The reason we do not
ordinarily know it is that
the rate and wave length of that celestial communication can
not be registered
on the clumsy apparatus of our brains. It takes place
through our astral or
spiritual brains and can not arouse the coarser physical
brain to synchronous
vibration.
Her critique of the Spiritualistic thesis in general would
be that something
like ninety per cent of all ordinary "spirit"
messages contain nothing to which
the quality of spirituality, as we understand that term in
its best
significance, can in any measure be ascribed.
In rebuttal, Spiritualists point to many previsions,
admonitory dreams, verified
prophecies and other messages of great beauty and lofty
spirituality, some of
them leading to genuine reform of character, and they
advance the claim, that
genuine transference of intelligence from the spirit realms
to earth is vastly
more general than that fraction of experience which could be
subsumed under her
"rare and exceptional cases of
"spirituality.".57
In one of the last works issued by Mr. Sinnett19 he deplores
the unfortunate
clash that has come between the two cults, points out that
it is foolish and
unfounded, and reminds both parties of the broad bases of
agreement which are
found in the two systems. He feels that there can be no
insurmountable points of
antagonism, inasmuch as Spiritualism, too, he asserts, is
under the watch and
ward of a member of the Great White Brotherhood, the Master
known as Hilarion;
and that it would be illogical to assume that members of
that same spiritual
Fraternity could foster movements among mankind that work at
cross purposes with
each other. But Mr. Sinnett does not give any authority for
his statement as to
Hilarion's regency over Spiritualism, and many Theosophists
are inclined to
doubt it. He feels that there is every good reason why
Spiritualism should go
forward with Theosophy in such a unity of purpose as would
render their combined
influence the most potent force in the world today against
the menace of
materialism. Whenever Spiritualists display an interest in
the formulation of
some scheme of life or cosmology in which their phenomena
may find a meaningful
allocation, they can hardly go in any other direction than
straight into
Theosophy. This is shown by their Articles of Faith, in
which the idea of Karma,
the divine nature of man, his spiritual constitution and
other conceptions
equally theosophic have found a place.
Perhaps Theosophists and Spiritualists alike may discern the
bases of harmony
between their opposing faiths in a singular passage from The
Mahatma Letters, an
utterance of the Master K.H.
"It is this [sweet blissful dream of devachanic Maya]
during such a condition of
complete Maya that the Souls or actual Egos of pure loving
sensitivities,
laboring under the same illusion, think their loved ones
come down to them on
earth, while it is their own Spirits that are raised towards
those in the
Devachan. Many of the subjective spiritual
communications-most of them when the
sensitives are pure-minded-are real; but it is most
difficult for the
uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the true and correct
pictures of what he
sees and hears. Some of the phenomena called psychography
(though more rarely)
are also real. The spirit of the sensitive getting idylized,
so to say, by the
aura of the Spirit in the Devachan, becomes for a few
minutes that departed
personality, and writes in the handwriting of the latter, in
his language and in
his thoughts, as they were during his life-time. The two
spirits become blended
in one; and, the preponderance of one over the other during
such phenomena
determines the preponderance of personality in the
characteristics exhibited in
such writings and 'trance-speaking.' What you call 'rapport'
is in plain fact an
identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of
the incarnate medium
and the astral part of the discarnate personality . . .
there is rapport between
medium and 'control' when their astral molecules move in
accord. And the
question whether the communication shall reflect more of the
one personal
idiosyncrasy or the other, is determined by the relative
intensity of the two
sets of vibrations in the compound wave of Akasha. The less
identical the
vibratory impulses the more mediumistic and less spiritual
will be the message.
So then measure your medium's moral state by that of the
alleged 'controlling'
Intelligence, and your tests of genuineness leave nothing to
be desired."20
This plank in the Theosophic platform not having been laid
down in 1875 to
bridge the chasm between the two movements, Madame Blavatsky
drew away from her
Spiritualistic associates, and it became but a matter of
time until some
propitious circumstance should give to her divergent
tendency a body and a name.
The break with Spiritualism and the launching of the
Theosophical Society were
practically contemporary. The actual formation of the new
organization does not.58
on the surface appear to have been a deliberate act of
Madame Blavatsky. While
it would never have been organized without her presence and
her influence, still
she was not the prime mover in the steps which brought it
into being. She seems
merely to have gone along while others led. However her
Society grew out of the
stimulus that had gone forth from her.
It was Col. Henry Steele Olcott who assumed the rτle of
outward leader in the
young movement. He gave over (eventually) a lucrative
profession as a
corporation lawyer, an agricultural expert, and an official
of the government,
to expend all his energies in this enterprise. He had
acquired the title of
colonel during the Civil War in the Union army's manoeuvres
in North Carolina.
At the close of the war he had been chosen by the government
to conduct some
investigations into conditions relative to army contracts in
the Quartermaster's
Department and had discharged his duties with great
efficiency, receiving the
approbation of higher officials. He was regarded as an
authority on agriculture
and lectured before representative bodies on that subject.
He had established a
successful practice as a corporation counsel, numbering the
Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company among his clients. In addition to these
activities he had done
much reportorial work for the press, notably in connection
with his
Spiritualistic researches. His authorship of several works
on the phenomena has
already been mentioned. His career had achieved for him a
record of high
intelligence, great ability, and a character of probity and
integrity.
It is the belief of Theosophists that he was expressly
chosen by the Mahatmas to
share with Madame Blavatsky the honor and the labor of
spreading her message in
the world. A passage from the Mahatma Letters puts this in
clear light. The
Master K.H. there says:
"So, casting about, we found in America the man to
stand as leader-a man of
great moral courage, unselfish, and having other good
qualities. He was far from
being the best, but-he was the best one available. . . . We
sent her to America,
brought them together-and the trial began. From the first
both she and he were
given to understand that the issue lay entirely with
themselves."
In spite of difficulties, caused by the clash of
temperaments and policies, this
odd, "divinely-constituted" partnership held
firmly together until the end.
Their relationship was one of a loyal camaraderie, both
being actuated by an
uncommon devotion to the same cause.
As early as May, 1875, the Colonel had suggested the
formation of a "Miracle
Club," to continue spiritistic investigation. His
proposal was made in the
interest of psychic research. It was not taken up. But
Madame Blavatsky's
sprightly evening chatter and her reported magical feats
continued to draw
groups of intelligent people to her rooms. Among those thus
attracted was Mr.
George H. Felt, who had made some careful studies in phases
of Egyptology. He
was asked to lecture on these subjects and on the 7th of
September, 1875, a
score of people had gathered in H.P.B.'s parlors to hear his
address on "The
Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians." Dr. Seth
Pancoast, a most erudite
Kabbalist was present, and after the lecture he led the
discussion to the
subject of the occult powers of the ancient magicians. Mr.
Felt said he had
proven those powers and had with them evoked elemental
creatures and "hundreds
of shadowy forms." As the tense debate proceeded,
acting on an impulse, Col.
Olcott wrote on a scrap of paper, which he passed over to
Madame Blavatsky
through the hands of Mr. W. Q. Judge, the following:
"Would it not be a good
thing to form a Society for this kind of study?" She
read it and indicated
assent..59
Col. Olcott arose and "after briefly sketching the
present condition of the
Spiritualistic movement; the attitude of its antagonists,
the Materialists; the
irrepressible conflict between science and the religious
sectaries; the
philosophical character of the ancient theosophies and their
sufficiency to
reconcile all existing antagonisms; . . . he proposed to
form a nucleus around
which might gather all the enlightened and brave souls who
are willing to work
together for the collection and diffusion of knowledge. His
plan was to organize
a Society of Occultists and begin at once to collect a
library; and to diffuse
information concerning those secret laws of Nature which
were so familiar to the
Chaldeans and Egyptians, but are totally unknown to our
modern world of
science."21
It was a plain proposal to organize for occult research, for
the extension of
human knowledge of the esoteric sciences, and for a study of
the psychic
possibilities in man's nature. No religious or ethical or
even philosophical
interest can be detected in the first aims. The Brotherhood
plank was a later
development, and the philosophy was an outgrowth of the
necessity of
rationalizing the scientific data brought to light. The very
nature of the
movement committed it, of course, to an anti-materialistic
view. Col. Olcott was
still predominantly concerned to get demonstrative psychic
displays. He was made
Chairman, and Mr. Judge, Secretary.
It is interesting to note the personnel of this first
gathering of Theosophists.
"The company included several persons of great learning
and some of wide
personal influence. The Managing Editors of two religious
papers; the co-editors
of two literary magazines; an Oxford LL.D.; a venerable
Jewish scholar and
traveler of repute; an editorial writer of one of the New
York morning dailies;
the President of the New York Society of Spiritualists; Mr.
C. C. Massey an
English barrister at law; Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten and Dr.
Britten; two New
York lawyers besides Col. Olcott; a partner in a
Philadelphia publishing house;
a well-known physician; and . . . Madame Blavatsky
herself."22
At a late hour the meeting adjourned until the following
evening, when
organization could be more fully effected. Those who were
present at the Sept.
8th meeting, and who thus became the actual formers (Col.
Olcott insists on the
word instead of Founders, reserving that title to Madame
Blavatsky and himself)
of the Theosophical Society, were: Col. Olcott, H. P.
Blavatsky, Chas. Sotheran,
Dr. Chas. E. Simmons, H. D. Monachesi, C. C. Massey, of
London, W. L. Alden, G.
H. Felt, D. E. deLara, Dr. W. Britten, Mrs. E. H. Britten,
Henry J. Newton, John
Storer Cobb, J. Hyslop. W. Q. Judge, H. M. Stevens. A By-Law
Committee was
named, other routine business attended to, a general
discussion held and
adjournment taken to Sept. 13th. Mr. Felt gave another
lecture on Sept. 18th,
after which several additional members were nominated, the
name, "The
Theosophical Society," proposed, and a committee on
rooms chosen. Several
October meetings were held in furtherance of the Society;
and on the 17th of
November, 1875, the movement reached the final stage of
constitutional
organization. Its President was Col. Henry Olcott;
Vice-Presidents, Dr. Seth
Pancoast and G. H. Felt; Corresponding Secretary, Madame H.
P. Blavatsky;
Recording Secretary, John S. Cobb; Treasurer, Henry J.
Newton; Librarian, Chas.
Sotheran; Councillors, Rev. H. Wiggin, R. P. Westbrook, LL.
D., Mrs. E. H.
Britten, C. E. Simmons, and Herbert D. Monachesi; Counsel to
the Society, W. Q.
Judge. Mr. John W. Lovell, the New York publisher, has the
distinction of having
paid the first five dollars (initiation fee) into the
treasury, and is at the
present writing the only surviving member of the founding
group. At the November
17th meeting the President delivered his inaugural address.
It was an
amplification of his remarks made at the meeting of Sept.
7th, with some.60
prognostications of what the work of the Society was
destined to mean in the
changing conceptions of modern thought.
The infant Society did not at once proceed to grow and
expand. The chief reason
for this was that Mr. Felt, whose theories had been the
immediate object of
strongest interest, and who was expected to be the leader
and teacher in their
quest of the secrets of ancient magic, for some
unaccountable reason failed them
utterly. His promised lectures were never scheduled, his
demonstrations of
spirit-evocation never shown. This disappointment weighed
heavily upon some of
the members. Mrs. Britten, Mr. Newton, and the other
Spiritualists in the group,
finding that Madame Blavatsky was not disposed to
investigate mediums in the
conventional fashion, or in any way to make the Society an
adjunct of the
Spiritualistic movement, suffered another disappointment and
became inactive or
openly withdrew. Mr. Judge and Col. Olcott were busy with
their professional
labors, and Madame Blavatsky had plunged into the writing of
Isis Unveiled. The
Society fell into the state of "innocuous
desuetude," and was domiciled solely
in the hearts of three persons, Olcott, Judge, and Madame
Blavatsky. However
dead it might be to all outward appearance, it still lived
in the deep
convictions of this trio. True, an occasional new recruit
was admitted, two
names in particular being worthy of remark. On April 5th,
1878, Col. Olcott
received the signed application for membership from a young
inventor, one Thomas
Alva Edison, and near the same time General Abner W.
Doubleday, veteran Major-General
in the Union Army, united with the Society. Edison had been attracted
by
the objects of the Society, largely because of certain
experiences he had had in
connection with the genesis of some of his ideas for
inventions. They had seemed
to come to him from an inner intelligence independent of his
voluntary thought
control. Also he had experimented to determine the
possibility of moving
physical objects by exertion of the will. He was doubtless
in close sympathy
with the purposes of the Society, but the main currents of
his mechanical
interests drew him away from active coφperation with it. As
for Major-General
Doubleday, Theosophy gave articulate voice to theories as to
life, death, and
human destiny which he had long cherished without a formal
label. He stated that
it was the Theosophic idea of Karma which had maintained his
courage throughout
the ordeals of the Civil War and he testified that his
understanding of this
doctrine nerved him to pass with entire fearlessness through
those crises in
which he was exposed to fire.23 When Theosophy was brought
to his notice he cast
in his lot with the movement and was a devoted student and
worker while he
lived. When the two Founders left America at the end of 1878
for India, Col.
Olcott constituted General Doubleday the President of the
American body.24
Concerning Mr. W. Q. Judge, there is only to be said that he
was a young
barrister at the time, practicing in New York and making his
home in Brooklyn,
where until about 1928 a brother, John Judge, survived him.
He was a man of
upright character and had always manifested a quick interest
in such matters as
Theosophy brought to his attention. It is reported among
Theosophists that
Madame Blavatsky immediately saw in him a pupil upon whose
entire sympathy with
her own deeper aims and understanding of her esoteric
situation she could rely
implicitly. He is believed always to have stood closer to
her in a spiritual
sense than Col. Olcott; in fact it is hinted that there was
a secret
understanding between them as to the inner motivations
behind the Society. Later
developments in the history of the movement seem to give
weight to this theory.
Mr. Judge and General Doubleday were the captains of the
frail Theosophic craft
in America during something like four years, from 1878 to
1882, following the
sailing of the two Founders for India. If little activity
was displayed by the
Society during this period, it was not in any measure the
fault of those left in
charge. They were not lacking in zeal for the cause. It is
to be attributed.61
chiefly to a state of suspended animation in which it was
left by the departure
of the official heads. This condition itself was brought
about by the long
protracted delay in carrying out a measure which in 1878
Col. Olcott had
designed to adopt for the future expansion of the Society.
Madame Blavatsky's
work in Isis had disclosed the fact that there was an almost
complete sympathy
of aims in certain respects between the new Society and the
Masonic Fraternity;
that the latter had been the recipient and custodian down
the ages of much of
the ancient esoteric tradition which it was the purpose of
Theosophy to revive.
The idea of converting the Theosophical Society into a
Masonic body with ritual
and degrees had been under contemplation for some time, and
overtures toward
that end had been made to persons in the Masonic order. In
fact the plan had
been so favorably regarded that on his departure Col. Olcott
left Mr. Judge and
General Doubleday under instructions to hold all other
activities in abeyance
until he should prepare a form of ritual that would properly
express the
Society's spiritual motif and aims. It happened, however,
that on reaching India
both his and his colleague's time was so occupied with other
work and other
interests that for three years they never could give
attention to the matter of
the ritual. By that time they found the Society beginning to
grow so rapidly
without the support they had intended for it in the union
with an old and
respected secret order, that the project was abandoned. But it
was this
tentative plan that was responsible for the apparent
lifelessness of the
American organization during those years. A number of times
the two American
leaders telegraphed Olcott in India to hasten the ritual and
hinted that its
non-appearance forced them to keep the Society here embalmed
in an aggravated
condition of status quo. When the scheme was definitely
abandoned,
straightforward Theosophic propaganda was initiated and a
period of healthy
expansion began.
It is of interest in this connection to note that on March
8, 1876, on Madame
Blavatsky's own motion, it was "resolved, that the
Society adopt one or more
signs of recognition, to be used among the Fellows of the
Society or for
admissions to the meetings." This might indicate her
steady allegiance to the
principle of esotericism. The practice fell into disuse
after a time. Yet it was
this idea of secrecy always lurking in the background of her
mind that
eventually led to the formation of a graded hierarchy in the
Theosophical
Society when the Esoteric School was formally organized.
Another development that Col. Olcott says "I should
prefer to omit altogether if
I could" from the early history of the Society was the
affiliation of the
organization with a movement then being inaugurated in India
toward the
resuscitation of pure Vedic religion. This proceeded further
than the
contemplated union with Masonry, and it led to the necessity
of a more succinct
pronouncement of their creed by Col. Olcott and Madame
Blavatsky.
Naturally Madame Blavatsky's accounts of the existence of
the great secret
Brotherhood of Adepts in North India and her glorification
of "Aryavarta" as the
home of the purest occult knowledge, had served to engender
a sort of nostalgia
in the hearts of the two Founders for "Mother
India." It seemed quite plausible
that, once the aims of the Theosophical Society were
broadcast in Hindustan, its
friendly attitude toward the ancient religions of that
country would act as an
open sesame to a quick response on the part of thousands of native
Hindus. It
was not illogical to believe that the young Theosophical
Society would advance
shortly to a position of great influence among the
Orientals, whose psychology,
ideals, and religious conceptions it had undertaken to
exalt, particularly in
the eyes of the Western nations. India thus came to be
looked upon as the land
of promise, and the "return home," as Madame
Blavatsky termed it, became more
and more a consummation devoutly to be wished. With Isis
completed and published.62
the call to India rang ever louder, and finally in November,
1878, came the
Master's orders to make ready. It was not until the 18th of
December that the
ship bearing the two pilgrims passed out of the Narrows.
There had seemed to be no way opened for them to make an
effective start in
India, no appropriate channel of introduction to their work
there, until 1878.
Then Col. Olcott chanced to learn of a movement recently
launched in India,
whose aims and ideals, he was given to believe, were
identical with those of his
own Society. It was the Arya Samaj, founded by one Swami
Dhyanand, who was
reputed to be a member of the same occult Brotherhood as
that to which their own
Masters, K.H. and M., belonged. This latter allegation was
enough to win the
immediate interest of the two devotees in its mission, and
through
intermediaries Col. Olcott was put in touch with the Swami,
to whom he made
overtures to join forces. The Arya Samaj was represented to
the Colonel as
world-wide in its eclecticism, devoted to a revival of the
ancient purity of
Vedantism and pledged to a conception of God as an eternal
impersonal principle
which, under whatever name, all people alike worshipped. An
official linking of
the two bodies was formally made in May, 1878, and the title
of the Theosophical
Society was amended to "The Theosophical Society of the
Arya Samaj." But before
long the Colonel received a translation of the rules and
doctrines of the Arya
Samaj, which gave him a great shock. Swami Dhyanand's views
had either radically
changed or had originally been misrepresented. His cult was
found to be
drastically sectarian-merely a new sect of Hinduism-and
quite narrow in certain
lines. Even then the Colonel endeavored to bridge the gap,
drawing up a new
definition of the aims of his Society in such an open
fashion that the way was
left clear for any Theosophists to associate with the Samaj
if they should so
desire. It was not until several years after the arrival in
India that final
disruption of all connection between the two Societies was
made, the Founders
having received what Col. Olcott calls "much evil
treatment" from the learned
Swami.
When the first discovery of the real character of the Arya
Samaj was made in
1878, it was deemed necessary to issue a circular defining
the Theosophical
Society in more explicit terms than had yet been done.
Olcott does not quote
from this circular of his own, but gives the language of the
circular issued by
the British Theosophical Society, then just organized, as
embodying the
essentials of his own statement. This enables us to discern
how far the
originally vague Theosophical ideals had come on their way
to explicit
enunciation.
1. The British Theosophical Society is founded for the
purpose of discovering
the nature and powers of the human soul and spirit by
investigation and
experiment.
2. The object of the Society is to increase the amount of
human health,
goodness, knowledge, wisdom, and happiness.
3. The Fellows pledge themselves to endeavor, to the best of
their powers, to
live a life of temperance, purity, and brotherly love. They
believe in a Great
First Intelligent Cause, and in the Divine Sonship of the
spirit of man, and
hence in the immortality of that spirit, and in the
universal brotherhood of the
human race.
4. The Society is in connection and sympathy with the Arya
Samaj of Aryavarta,
one object of which Society is to elevate, by a true
spiritual education,
mankind out of degenerate, idolatrous and impure forms of
worship wherever
prevalent.25.63
In his own circular, Olcott, with the concurrence of H.P.B.,
made the first
official statement of the threefold hierarchical
constitution of the
Theosophical Society. This grouping naturally arose out of
the basic facts in
the situation itself. There were, first, at the summit of
the movement, the
Brothers or Adepts; then there were persons, like H.P.B.,
Olcott himself and
Judge, with perhaps a few others, who were classified in the
category of
"chelas" or accepted pupils of the Masters; then
there were just plain members
of the Society, having no personal link as yet with the
great Teachers. A
knowledge of this graduation is essential to an
understanding of much in the
later history of the Society.
In the same circular the President said:
"The objects of the Society are various. It influences
its Fellows to acquire an
intimate knowledge of natural law, especially its occult
manifestations."
Then follow some sentences penned by Madame Blavatsky:
"As the highest development, physically and
spiritually, on earth of the
creative cause, man should aim to solve the mystery of his
being. He is the
procreator of his species, physically, and having inherited
the nature of the
unknown but palpable cause of his own creation, must possess
in his inner
psychical self this creative power in lesser degree. He
should, therefore, study
to develop his latent powers, and inform himself respecting
the laws of
magnetism, electricity and all other forms of force, whether
of the seen or
unseen universes."
The President proceeds:
"The Society teaches and expects its Fellows to
personally exemplify the highest
morality and religious aspirations; to oppose the
materialism of science and
every form of dogmatic theology . . .; to make known, among
Western nations, the
long-suppressed facts about Oriental religious philosophies,
their ethics,
chronology, esotericism, symbolism . . . ; to disseminate a
knowledge of the
sublime teachings of the pure esoteric system of the archaic
period which are
mirrored in the oldest Vedas and in the philosophy of
Gautauma Buddha,
Zoroaster, and Confucius; finally and chiefly, to aid in the
institution of a
Brotherhood of Humanity, wherein all good and pure men of
every race shall
recognize each other as the equal effects (upon this planet)
of one Uncreate,
Universal, Infinite and Everlasting Cause."26
He sums up the central ideas as being:
1. The study of occult science.
2. The formation of a nucleus of universal brotherhood.
3. The revival of Oriental literature and philosophy.
And these three became later substantially the permanent
platform of the
Society. In their final and present form they stand:
1. To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of
Humanity without
distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color.
2. To encourage the study of Comparative Religion,
Philosophy, and Science..64
3. To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the
powers latent in man.
The inclusion of a moral program to accompany occult
research and comparative
religion was seen to be necessary. Madame Blavatsky's
disapprobation of
Spiritualism had as its prime motivation that movement's
lack of any moral bases
for psychic progress. Therefore the ethical implications
which she saw as
fundamental in any true occult system were embodied in the
Theosophic platform
in the Universal Brotherhood plank. Brotherhood, a somewhat
vague general term,
was made the only creedal or ethical requirement for
fellowship in the Society.
At that it is, as a moral obligation, a matter of the
individual's own
interpretation, and it is the Society's only link with the
ethical side of
religion. Not even the member's clear violation of accepted
or prevalent social
codes can disqualify him from good standing. The Society
refuses to be a judge
of what constitutes morality or its breach, leaving that
determination to the
member himself. At the same time through its literature it
declares that no
progress into genuine spirituality is possible "without
clean hands and a pure
heart." It adheres to the principle that morality
without freedom is not
morality. Thus the movement which began with an impulse to
investigate the
occult powers of ancient magicians, was moulded by
circumstances into a moral
discipline, which placed little store in magic feats..65
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER V
ISIS UNVEILED
One morning in the summer of 1875 Madame Blavatsky showed
her colleague some
sheets of manuscript which she had written. She explained:
"I wrote this last
night 'by order,' but what the deuce it is to be I don't
know. Perhaps it is for
a newspaper article, perhaps for a book, perhaps for
nothing: anyhow I did as I
was ordered."
She put it away in a drawer and nothing more was said about
it for some months.
In September of that year she went to Syracuse on a visit to
Prof. and Mrs.
Hiram Corson, of Cornell University, and while there she
began to expand the few
original pages. She wrote back to Olcott in New York that
"she was writing about
things she had never studied and making quotations from
books she had never read
in all her life; that, to test her accuracy Prof. Corson had
compared her
quotations with classical works in the University Library
and had found her to
be right."1
She had never undertaken any extensive literary production
in her life and her
unfamiliarity with English at this time was a real handicap.
When she returned
to the city Olcott took two suites of rooms at 433 West 34th
Street, and there
she set to work to expound the rudiments of her great
science. From 1875 to 1877
she worked with unremitting energy, sitting from morning
until night at her
desk. In the evenings, after his day's professional labors,
Olcott came to her
help, aiding her with the English and with the systematic
arrangement of the
heterogeneous mass of material that poured forth. Later Dr.
Alexander Wilder,
the Neo-Platonic scholar, helped her with the spelling of
the hundreds of
classical philological terms she employed. But Madame
Blavatsky wrote the book,
Isis Unveiled.
After the first flush of its popularity it has been
forgotten, outside of
Theosophic circles. Even among Theosophists, or at any rate
in the largest
organic group of the Theosophical Society, the book is
hardly better known than
in the world at large. During the last twenty-five years
there has been a
tendency in the Society to read expositions of Madame
Blavatsky's ponderous
volumes rather than the original presentation; neophytes in
the organization
have been urged to pass up these books as being too
recondite and abstruse. It
has even been hinted that many things are better understood
now than when the
Founder wrote, and that certain crudities of dogma and
inadequacies of
presentation can be avoided by perusing the commentary
literature. As a result
of this policy the percentage of Theosophic students who
know exactly what
Madame Blavatsky wrote over fifty years ago is quite small.
Thousands of members
of the Theosophical Society have grown old in the cult's
activities and have
never read the volumes that launched the cult ideas..66
Isis must not, however, be regarded as a text-book on
Theosophy. The Secret
Doctrine, issued ten years later, has a better claim to that
title. Isis makes
no formulation, certainly not a systematic one, of the creed
of occultism. It is
far from being an elucidation or exegesis of the basic
principles of what is now
known as Theosophy. Isis makes no attempt to organize the
whole field of human
and divine knowledge, as does The Secret Doctrine. It merely
points to the
evidence for the existence of that knowledge, and only dimly
suggests the
outlines of the cosmic scheme in which it must be made to
fit. It is in a sense
a panoramic survey of the world literature out of which she
essayed in part to
draw the system of Theosophy. If Theosophy is to be found in
Isis, it is there
in seminal form, not in organic expression. Perhaps it were
better to say that
the book prepared the soil for the planting of Madame
Blavatsky's later
teaching. Her impelling thought was to reveal the traces, in
ancient and
medieval history and literature, of a secret science whose
principles had been
lost to view. She aimed to show that the most vital science
mankind had ever
controlled had sunk further below general recognition now
than in any former
times. She would relight the lamp of that archaic wisdom,
which would illuminate
the darkness of modern scientific pride.
Her work, then, was to make a restatement of the occult
doctrine with its
ancient attestations. This was a gigantic task. It meant
little short of a
thorough search in the entire field of ancient religion,
philosophy, and
science, with an eye to the discernment of the mystery
tradition, teachings, and
practices wherever manifested; and then the collation,
correlation, and
systematic presentation of this multifarious material in
something like a
structural unity. The many legends of mystic power, the
hundreds of myths and
fables, were to be traced to ancient rites, whose far-off
symbolism threw light
on their significance. It would be not merely an
encyclopedia of the whole
mythical life of the race, but a digest and codification, so
to speak, of the
entire mass into a system breathing intelligible meaning and
common sense. Her
task, in a word, was to redeem the whole ancient world from
the modern stigma of
superstition, crude ignorance, and childish imagination.
In view of the immensity of her undertaking we are forced to
wonder whence came
the self-assurance that led her to believe she could
successfully achieve it.
She was sadly deficient in formal education; her
opportunities for scholarship
and research had been limited; her command of the English
language was
imperfect. Yet her actual accomplishment pointed to her
possession of capital
and resources the existence of which has furnished the
ground for much of the
mystery now enshrouding her life. There seems to be an
obvious discrepancy
between her qualifications and her product, to account for
which diverse
theories have been adduced.
Just how, when and where Madame Blavatsky gained her
acquaintance with
practically the entire field of ancient religions,
philosophies, and science, is
a query which probably can never be satisfactorily answered.
The history of many
portions of her life before 1873 is unrecorded. We do not
know when or where she
studied ancient literature. Books from which she quoted were
not within her
reach when she wrote Isis. Can her knowledge be attributed
to a phenomenal
memory? Olcott does say:
"She constantly drew upon a memory stored with a wealth
of recollections of
personal perils and adventures and of knowledge of occult
science, not merely
unparalleled, but not even approached by any other person who
had ever appeared
in America, so far as I have heard."2.67
Throughout the two volumes of Isis there are frequent
allusions to or actual
passages from ancient writings, a list of which includes the
following: The
Codex Nazareus; the Zohar, the great Kabbalistic work of the
Jews; Chaldean3
Oracles; Chaldean Book of Numbers; Psellus' Works;
Zoroastrian Oracles; Magical
and Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster; Egyptian Book of
the Dead; Books of
Hermes; Quichι Cosmogony; Book of Jasher; Kabala of the
Tanaim; Sepher Jezira;
Book of Wisdom of Schlomah (Solomon); Secret Treatise on
Mukta and Badha; The
Stangyour of the Tibetans; Desatir (pseudo-Persian4); Orphic
Hymns; Sepher
Toldos Jeshu (Hebrew MSS. of great antiquity); Laws of Manu;
Book of Keys
(Hermetic Work); Gospel of Nicodemus; The Shepherd of
Hermas; (Spurious) Gospel
of the Infancy; Gospel of St. Thomas; Book of Enoch; The
History of Baarlam and
Josaphat; Book of Evocations(of the Pagodas); Golden Verses
of Pythagoras;
various Kabbalas; Tarot of the Bohemians.
In the realm of more widely-known literature, she uses
material from Plato and
to a minor extent, Aristotle; quotes the early Greek
philosophers, Thales,
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus; is conversant
with the Neo-Platonist
representatives, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry,
Iamblichus and
Proclus; shows familiarity with Plutarch, Philo, Apollonius
of Tyana, the
Gnostics, Basilides, Bardesanes, Marcion, and Valentinus.
She had examined the
Church Fathers, from Augustine to Justin Martyr, and was
especially familiar
with Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius, whom she charged
with having wrecked the
true ancient wisdom. Beside this array she draws on the
enormous Vedic,
Brahmanic, Vedantic, and Buddhistic literatures; likewise
the Chinese, Persian,
Babylonian, "Chaldean," Syrian, and Egyptian. Nor
does she neglect the ancient
American contributions, such as the Popul Vuh. Her
acquaintance also with the
vast literature of occult magic and philosophy of the Middle
Ages seems hardly
less inclusive. She levies upon Averroλs, Maimonides,
Paracelsus, Van Helmont,
Robert Fludd, Eugenius Philalethes, Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim, Roger
Bacon, Bruno, Pletho, Mirandolo, Henry More and many a
lesser-known expounder of
mysticism and magic art. She quotes incessantly from scores
of compendious
modern works.
Because of this show of prodigious learning some students
later alleged that
Isis was not the work of Madame Blavatsky, but of Dr.
Alexander Wilder; others
declared that Col. Olcott had written it.5
There are three main sources of testimony bearing on the
composition of the
books: (1) Statements of her immediate associates and
co-workers in the writing;
(2) Her own version; (3) The evidence of critics who have
traced the sources of
her materials.
First, there is the testimony of her colleague, Olcott, who
for two years
collaborated almost daily with her in the work. He says:
"Whence, then, did H.P.B. draw the materials which
comprise Isis and which
cannot be traced to accessible literary sources of
quotation? From the Astral
Light, and by her soul-senses, from her Teachers-the
'Brothers,' 'Adepts,'
'Sages,' 'Masters,' as they have been variously called. How
do I know it? By
working two years with her on Isis and many more years on
other literary work."6
He goes on:
"To watch her at work was a rare and
never-to-be-forgotten experience. We sat at
opposite sides of one big table usually, and I could see her
every movement. Her
pen would be flying over the page; when she would suddenly
stop, look out into
space with the vacant eye of the clairvoyant seer, shorten
her vision as though.68
to look at something held invisibly in the air before her,
and begin copying on
the paper what she saw. The quotation finished, her eyes
would resume their
natural expression, and she would go on writing until again
stopped by a similar
interruption."7
Still more remarkable is the following:
"Most perfect of all were the manuscripts which were
written for her while she
was sleeping. The beginning of the
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER on the civilization of ancient Egypt
(Vol. I.,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XIV) is an illustration. We had stopped work the evening
before at about 2 A.M. as usual, both too tired to stop for
our usual smoke and
chat before parting; she almost fell asleep in her chair,
while I was bidding
her goodnight; so I hurried off to my bed room. The next
morning, when I came
down after my breakfast, she showed me a pile of at least
thirty or forty pages
of beautifully written H.P.B. manuscript, which, she said,
she had had written
for her by-------, a Master . . . It was perfect in every
respect and went to
the printers without revision."8
It is the theory of Olcott that the mind of H.P.B. was
receptive to the
impressions of three or four intelligent entities-other
persons living or dead-who
overshadowed her mentally, and wrote through her brain.
These personages
seemed to cast their sentences upon an imperceptible screen
in her mind. They
sometimes talked to Olcott as themselves, not as Madame
Blavatsky. Their
intermittent tenancy of her mind he takes as accounting for
the higgledy-piggledy
manner in which the book was constructed. Each had his
favorite themes
and the Colonel learned what kind of material to expect when
one gave place to
another. There was in particular, in addition to several of
the Oriental
"Sages," a collaborator in the person of an old
Platonist-"the pure soul of one
of the wisest philosophers of modern times, one who was an
ornament to our race,
a glory to his country." He was so engrossed in his
favorite earthly pursuits of
philosophy that he projected his mind into the work of
Madame Blavatsky and gave
her abundant aid.
"He did not materialize and sit with us, nor obsess
H.P.B. medium-fashion, he
would simply talk with her-psychically, by the hour
together, dictating copy,
telling her what references to hunt up; answering my
questions about details,
instructing me as to principles; and, in fact, playing the
part of a third
person in our literary symposium. He gave me his portrait
once-a rough sketch in
colored crayons on flimsy paper . . . from first to last his
relation to us both
was that of a mild, kind, extremely learned teacher and
elder friend."9
The medieval occultist Paracelsus manifested his presence
for a brief time one
evening.10 At another time Madame produced two volumes
necessary to verify
questions which Olcott doubted.
"I went and found the two volumes wanted, which, to my
knowledge, had not been
in the house until that very moment. I compared the texts
with H.P.B.'s
quotation, showed her that I was right in my suspicions as
to the error, made
the proof correction, and then . . . returned the two
volumes to the place on
the ιtagθre from which I had taken them. I resumed my seat
and work, and when,
after while, I looked again in that direction, the books had
disappeared."11
As Olcott states, when one or another of these unseen
monitors was in evidence,
the work went on in fine fashion. But, he notes, when Madame
was left entirely
to her own devices, she floundered in more or less helpless
ineptitude. She
would write haltingly, scratch it over, make a fresh start,
work herself into a
fret and get nowhere..69
Olcott's testimony, as that of Dr. Wilder, Mr. Judge, Dr.
Corson, the Countess
Wachtmeister, the two Keightleys, Mr. Fawcett and all the
others who at one time
or another were in a position to observe Madame Blavatsky at
work, must be
accepted as sincere. But if anybody could be supposed to
know unmistakably what
was happening in her mind, that person would be the subject
herself. What has
she to say? She states decisively that she was not the
author, only the writer
of her books. In one of her home letters she says, speaking
of Isis:
"since neither ideas nor teachings are mine."
In another letter to Madame Jelihowsky she writes:
"Well, Vera, whether you believe me or not, something
miraculous is happening to
me. You cannot imagine in what a charmed world of pictures
and vision I live. I
am writing Isis; not writing, rather copying out and drawing
that which She
personally shows to me. Upon my word, sometimes it seems to
me that the ancient
goddess of Beauty in person leads me through all the
countries of past centuries
which I have to describe. I sit with my eyes open and to all
appearances see and
hear everything real and actual around me, and yet at the
same time I see and
hear that which I write. I feel short of breath; I am afraid
to make the
slightest movement for fear the spell might be broken.
Slowly century after
century, image after image, float out of the distance and
pass before me as if
in a magic panorama; and meanwhile I put them together in my
mind, fitting in
epochs and dates, and know for sure that there can be no
mistake. Races and
nations, countries and cities, which have long disappeared
in the darkness of
the prehistoric past, emerge and then vanish, giving place
to others; and then I
am told the consecutive dates. Hoary antiquity makes way for
historical periods;
myths are explained to me with events and people who have
really existed, and
every event which is at all remarkable, every newly-turned
page of this many-colored
book of life, impresses itself on my brain with photographic
exactitude.
My own reckonings and calculations appear to me later on as
separate colored
pieces of different shapes in the game which is called
casse-tκte (puzzles). I
gather them together and try to match them one after the other,
and at the end
there always comes out a geometrical whole. . . . Most
assuredly it is not I who
do it all, but my Ego, the highest principle that lives in
me. And even this
with the help of my Guru and teacher who helps me in
everything. If I happen to
forget something I have just to address him, and another of
the same kind in my
thought as what I have forgotten rises once more before my
eyes-sometimes whole
tables of numbers passing before me, long inventories of
events. They remember
everything. They know everything. Without them, from whence
could I gather my
knowledge? I certainly refuse point blank to attribute it to
my own knowledge or
memory, for I could never arrive alone at either such
premises or conclusions. I
tell you seriously I am helped. And he who helps me is my
Guru."12
In another letter to the same sister Helena assures her
relative about her
mental condition:
"Do not be afraid that I am off my head; all I can say
is that someone
positively inspires me. . . . More than this; someone enters
me. It is not I who
talk and write; it is something within me; my higher and
luminous Self; that
thinks and writes for me. Do not ask me, my friend, what I
experience, because I
could not explain it to you clearly. I do not know myself!
The one thing I know
is that now, when I am about to reach old age, I have become
a sort of
storehouse of somebody else's knowledge. . . . Someone comes
and envelops me as
a misty cloud and all at once pushes me out of myself, and
then I am not 'I' any
more-Helena P. Blavatsky-but somebody else. Someone strong
and powerful, born in.70
a totally different region of the world; and as to myself it
is almost as if I
were asleep, or lying by not quite conscious-not in my own
body, but close by,
held only by a thread which ties me to it. However at times
I see and hear
everything quite clearly; I am perfectly conscious of what
my body is saying and
doing-or at least its new possessor. I can understand and
remember it all so
well that afterwards I can repeat it, and even write down
his words. . . . At
such a time I see awe and fear on the faces of Olcott and
others, and follow
with interest the way in which he half-pityingly regards
them out of my own
eyes, and teaches them with my physical tongue. Yet not with
my mind, but his
own, which enwraps my brain like a cloud. . . . Ah, but I
really cannot explain
everything!"13
Again writing to her relatives, she states:
"When I wrote Isis I wrote it so easily that it was
certainly no labor but a
real pleasure. Why should I be praised for it? Whenever I am
told to write I sit
down and obey, and then I can write easily upon almost
anything-metaphysics,
psychology, philosophy, ancient religions, zoφlogy, natural
sciences or what
not. I never put myself the question: 'Can I write on this
subject?' . . .or,
'Am I equal to the task?' but I simply sit down and write.
Why? Because someone
who knows all dictates to me. My Master and occasionally
others whom I knew on
my travels years ago. . . . I tell you candidly, that
whenever I write upon a
subject I know little or nothing of, I address myself to
them, and one of them
inspires me, i.e., he allows me to simply copy what I write
from manuscripts,
and even printed matter, that pass before my eyes, in the
air, during which
process I have never been unconscious one single
instant."14
To her aunt she wrote:
"At such times it is no more I who write, but my inner
Ego, my 'luminous Self,'
who thinks and writes for me. Only see . . . you who know
me. When was I ever so
learned as to write such things? Whence was all this
knowledge?"
Whatever the actual authorship of the two volumes may have
been, their
publication stirred such wide-spread interest that the first
editions were swept
up at once, and Bouton, the publisher, was taken off guard,
there being some
delay before succeeding editions of the bulky tomes could be
issued.
Professional reviewers were not so generous; but the press
critics were frankly
intrigued into something like praise.15
Years after the publication of Isis, Mr. Emmette Coleman, a
former Theosophist
and contributor to current magazines, stated that he spent
three years upon a
critical and exhaustive examination of the sources used by
Madame Blavatsky in
her various works. He attempted to discredit the whole
Theosophic movement by
casting doubt upon the genuineness of her knowledge. He
accused her of outright
plagiarism and went to great pains to collect and present
his evidence. In 1893
he published his data. We quote the following passage from
his statement:
"In Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, I discovered some
2,000 passages copied
from other books without proper credit. By careful analysis
I found that in
compiling Isis about 100 books were used. About 1,400 books
are quoted from and
referred to in this work; but, from the 100 books which its
author possessed,
she copied everything in Isis taken from and relating to the
other 1,300. There
are in Isis about 2,100 quotations from and references to
books that were
copied, at second-hand, from books other than the originals;
and of this number
only about 140 are credited to the books from which Madame
Blavatsky copied them
at second-hand. The others are quoted in such a manner as to
lead the reader to.71
think that Madame Blavatsky had read and utilized the
original works, and had
quoted from them at first-hand,--the truth being that these
originals had
evidently never been read by Madame Blavatsky. By this means
many readers of
Isis . . . have been misled into thinking Madame Blavatsky
an enormous reader,
possessed of vast erudition; while the fact is her reading
was very limited, and
her ignorance was profound in all branches of
knowledge."16
Coleman went on to assert that "not a line of the
quotations" made by H.P.B.
ostensibly from the Kabala, from the old-time mystics at the
time of Paracelsus,
from the classical authors, Homer, Livy, Ovid, Virgil,
Pliny, and others, from
the Church Fathers, from the Neo-Platonists, was taken from
the originals, but
all from second-hand usage. He charged her with having
picked all these passages
out of modern books scattered throughout which she found the
material from a
wide range of ancient authorship. The reader of Isis will
readily find her many
references to modern authors. Coleman mentioned a half dozen
standard works that
she used; it is well worth while glancing at a fuller list.
She had read, or was
more or less familiar with: King's Gnostics; Jennings'
Rosicrucians; Dunlop's
Sod, and Spirit History of Man; Moor's Hindu Pantheon;
Ennemoser's History of
Magic; Howitt's History of the Supernatural; Salverte's
Philosophy of Magic;
Barrett's Magus; Col. H. Yule's The Book of Ser Marco Polo;
Inman's Pagan and
Modern Christian Symbolism and Ancient Faiths and Modern;
the anonymous The
Unseen Universe and Supernatural Religion; Bunsen's Egypt's
Place in Universal
History; Lundy's Monumental Christianity; Horst's
Zauber-Bibliothek; Cardinal
Wiseman's Lectures on Science and Religion; Draper's The
Conflict of Science
with Religion; Dupuis' Origin of All the Cults; Bailly's
Ancient and Modern
Astronomy; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;
Des Mousseaux's Roman
Catholic writings on Magic, Mesmerism, Spiritualism; Eliphas
Levi's works;
Jacolliot's twenty-seven volumes on Oriental systems; Max
Mόller's, Huxley's,
Tyndall's, and Spencer's works.
It is hardly to be doubted that Madame Blavatsky culled many
of her ancient gems
from these works, and she probably felt that it was a matter
of minor importance
how she came by them. What she was bent on saying was that
the ancients had said
these things and that they were confirmatory of her general
theses. Yet
Coleman's findings must not be disregarded. His work brought
into clearer light
the meagreness of her resources and her lack of scholarly
preparation for so
pretentious a study.
We have adduced the several hypotheses that have been
advanced to account for
the writing of Isis Unveiled. It must be left for the reader
to arrive at what
conclusion he can on the basis of the material presented. We
pass on to an
examination of the contents.
A hint as to the aim of the work, is given in the sub-title:
A Master-key to the
Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. She
says:
"The work now submitted to the public judgment is the
fruit of a somewhat
intimate acquaintance with Eastern Adepts and study of their
science. It is a
work on magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science. It
is an attempt to aid
the student to detect the vital principles which underlie
the philosophical
systems of old."17
She affirms it to be her aim "to show that the
pretended authorities of the West
must go to the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient and
respectfully ask them
to impart the alphabet of true science."18.72
Isis, then, is a glorification of the ancient Orientals.
Their knowledge was so
profound that we are incredulous when told about it. If we
have "harnessed the
forces of Nature to do our work," they had subjugated
the world to their will.
They knew things we have not yet dreamed of. She states:
"It is rather a brief summary of the religions,
philosophies and universal
traditions in the spirit of those secret doctrines of which
none,--thanks to
prejudice and bigotry-have reached Christendom in so
unmutilated a form as to
secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky
Mediaeval philosophers,
the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they
were the
depositaries, few men have dared to brave persecution and
prejudice by placing
their knowledge on record. And these few have never, as a
rule, written for the
public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times
who possessed the
key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them
or their doctrines,
have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either
charlatans or dreamers.
Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the
noblest of sciences-that
of the spiritual man-has gradually fallen."19
She plans to restore this lost and fairest of the sciences.
Materialism is
menacing man's higher spiritual unfoldment.
"To prevent the crushing of these spiritual
aspirations, the blighting of these
hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us
of a God and a
hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked
deformity and
distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our
voice is raised for
spiritual freedom and our plea made for the enfranchisement
from all tyranny,
whether of Science or Theology."20
She here sets forth her attitude toward orthodox religionism
as well as toward
materialistic science. She intimates that since the days of
the true esoteric
wisdom, mankind has been thrown back and forth between the
systems of an
unenlightening theology and an equally erroneous science,
both stultifying in
their influence on spiritual aspiration, both blighting the
delicate culture of
beauty and joyousness.
"It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing
problems [Who, where, what
is God? What is the spirit in man?] that we came into
contact with certain men,
endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound
knowledge that we may
truly designate them as the Sages of the Orient. To their
instruction we lent a
ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with
religion, the existence
of God and the immortality of man's spirit may be
demonstrated like a problem of
Euclid."
She adds:
"Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden
only from those who
overlooked it, derided it or denied its existence."21
The soul within escapes their view, and the Divine Mother
has no message for
them. To become conversant with the powers of the soul we
must develop the
higher faculties of intuition and spiritual vision.22
She says that there were colleges in the days of old for the
teaching of
prophecy and occultism in general. Samuel and Elisha were
heads of such
academies, she affirms. The study of magic or wisdom
included every branch of
science, the metaphysical as well as the physical,
psychology and physiology, in
their common and occult phases; and the study of alchemy was
universal, for it.73
was both a physical and a spiritual science. The ancients
studied nature under
its double aspect and the claim is that they discovered
secrets which the modern
physicist, who studies but the dead forms of things, can not
unlock. There are
regions of nature which will never yield their mysteries to
the scientist armed
only with mechanical apparatus. The ancients studied the
outer forms of nature,
but in relation to the inner life. Hence they saw more than
we and were better
able to read meaning in what they saw. They regarded
everything in nature as the
materialization of spirit. Thus they were able to find an
adequate ground for
the harmonization of science and religion. They saw spirit
begetting force, and
force matter; spirit and matter were but the two aspects of
the one essence.
Matter is nothing other than the crystallization of spirit
on the outer
periphery of its emanative range. The ancients worshipped,
not nature, but the
power behind nature.
Madame Blavatsky contrasts this fulness of the ancient
wisdom with the
barrenness of modern knowledge. She characterizes the
eighteenth century as a
"barren period," during which "the malignant
fever of scepticism" has spread
through the thought of the age and transmitted
"unbelief as an hereditary
disease on the nineteenth." She challenges science to
explain some of the
commonest phenomena of nature; why, for instance, the moon
affects insane
people, why the crises of certain diseases correspond to
lunar changes, why
certain flowers alternately open and close their petals as
clouds flit across
the face of the moon. She says that science has not yet
learned to look outside
this ball of dirt for hidden influences which are affecting
us day by day. The
ancients, she declares, postulated reciprocal relations
between the planetary
bodies as perfect as those between the organs of the body
and the corpuscles of
the blood. There is not a plant or mineral which has
disclosed the last of its
properties to the scientist. She declares that theurgical
magic is the last
expression of occult psychological science; and denies the
"Academicians" "the
right of expressing their opinion on a subject which they
have never
investigated." "Their incompetence to determine
the value of magic and
Spiritualism is as demonstrable as that of the Fiji Islander
to evaluate the
labors of Faraday or Agassiz." There was no missing
link in the ancient
knowledge, no hiatus to be filled "with volumes of
materialistic speculation
made necessary by the absurd attempt to solve an equation
with but one set of
quantities." She runs on:
"Our 'ignorant' ancestors traced the law of evolution
throughout the whole
universe. As by gradual progression from the star-cloudlet
to the development of
the physical body of man, the rule holds good, so from the
universal ether to
the incarnate human spirit, they traced one uninterrupted
series of entities.
These evolutions were from the world of spirit into the
world of gross matter;
and through that back again to the source of all things. The
'descent of
species' was to them a descent from the spirit, primal
source of all, to the
'degradation of matter.' In this complete chain of
unfoldings the elementary,
spiritual beings had as distinct a place, midway between the
extremes, as
Darwin's missing link between the ape and man."23
Modern knowledge posits only evolution; the old science held
that evolution was
neither conceivable nor understandable without a previous
involution.
The existence of myriads of orders of beings not human in a
realm of nature to
which our senses do not normally give us access, and of
which science knows
nothing at all, is posited in her arcane systems. She
catches at Milton's lines
to bolster this theory:
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk this earth,.74
Unseen both when we sleep and when we wake."
She says that if the spiritual faculties of the soul are
sharpened by intense
enthusiasm and purified from earthly desire, man may learn
to see some of these
denizens of the illimitable air.
The physical world was fashioned on the model of divine
ideas, which, like the
unseen lines of force radiated by the magnet, to throw the
iron-filings into
determinate shape, give form and nature to the physical
manifestation. If man's
essential nature partakes of this universal life, then it,
too, must partake of
all the attributes of the demiurgic power. As the Creator,
breaking up the
chaotic mass of dead inactive matter, shaped it into form,
so man, if he knew
his powers, could to a degree do the same.
To redeem the ancient world from modern scorn Madame
Blavatsky had to vindicate
magic-with all its incubus of disrepute and ridicule-and
lift its practitioners
to a lofty place in the ranks of true science. She had to
demonstrate that
genuine magic was a veritable fact, an undeniable part of
the history of man;
and not only true, but the highest evidence of man's kinship
with nature, the
topmost manifestation of his power, the royal science among
all sciences! To her
view the dearth of magic in modern philosophies was at once
the cause and the
effect of their barrenness. If they are to be vitalized
again, magic must be
revived. "That magic is indeed possible is the moral of
this book."24
And along with magic she had to champion its aboriginal
bed-fellows, astrology,
alchemy, healing, mesmerism, trance subjection, and the
whole brood of "pseudo-science."
"It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the
occult sciences with the
name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of
years one half of
mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half is
equivalent to saying
that the human race is composed only of knaves and incurable
idiots. Where is
the country in which magic was not practiced? At what age
was it wholly
forgotten?"25
She explains magic as based on a reciprocal sympathy between
celestial and
terrestrial natures. It is based on the mysterious
affinities existing between
organic and inorganic bodies, between the visible and the
invisible powers of
the universe. "That which science calls gravitation the
ancient and the medieval
hermeticists called magnetism, attraction, affinity."
She continues:
"A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of
everything existing in
Nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual
relations, attractions and
repulsions; the cause of these traced to the spiritual
principle which pervades
and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best
conditions for this
principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and
exhaustive knowledge
of natural law-this was and is the basis of magic."26
Out of man's kinship with nature, his identity of
constitution with it, she
argues to his magical powers:
"As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain
intensity of will, and the
shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations
they are called,
although to their creator they are real as any visible
object is to any one
else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of
this will, and the
forms become concrete, visible, objective; the man has
learned the secret of
secrets; he is a Magician."27.75
She makes it clear that this power is built on the conscious
control of the
substrate of the material universe. She states that the key
to all magic is the
formula: "Every insignificant atom is moved by
spirit." Magic is thus
conditioned upon the postulation of an omnipresent vital
ether, electro-spiritual
in composition, to which man has an affinity by virtue of
his being
identical in essence with it. Over it he can learn to
exercise a voluntary
control by the exploitation of his own psycho-dynamic
faculties. If he can lay
his hand on the elemental substance of the universe, if he can
radiate from his
ganglionic batteries currents of force equivalent to gamma
rays, of course he
can step into the cosmic scene with something of a
magician's powers. That such
an ether exists she states in a hundred places. She calls it
the elementary
substance, the Astral Light, the Alkahest, the Akasha. It is
the universal
principle of all life, the vehicle or battery of cosmic
energy. She says Newton
knew of it and called it "the soul of the world,"
the "divine sensorium." It is
the Book of Life; the memory of God,--since it never gives
up an impression.
Human memory is but a looking into pictures on this ether.
Clairvoyants and
psychometers but draw upon its resources through synchronous
vibrations.
"According to the Kabalistic doctrine the future exits
in the astral light in
embryo as the present existed in embryo in the past . . .
and our memories are
but the glimpses that we catch of the reflections of this
past in the currents
of the astral light, as the psychometer catches them from
the astral emanations
of the object held by him."28
Madame Blavatsky goes so far as to link the control of these
properties with the
tiny pulsations of the magnetic currents emanating from our
brains, under the
impelling power of will. Thus she attempts to unite magic with
the most subtle
conceptions of our own advanced physics and chemistry. She
thus weds the most
arrant of superstitions with the most respected of sciences.
The magnetic nature of gravitation is set forth in more than
one passage. She
wrote:
"The ethereal spiritual fire, the soul and the spirit
of the all-pervading
mysterious ether; the despair and puzzle of the
materialists, who will some day
find out that that which causes the numberless forces to
manifest themselves in
eternal correlation is but a divine electricity, or rather
galvanism, and that
the sun is one of the myriad magnets disseminated through
space. . . . There is
no gravitation in the Newtonian sense, but only magnetic
attraction and
repulsion; and it is only by their magnetism that the planets
of the solar
system have their motions regulated in their respective
orbits by the still more
powerful magnetism of the sun; not by their weight or
gravitation. . . . The
passage of light through this (cosmic ether) must produce
enormous friction.
Friction generates electricity and it is this electricity
and its correlative
magnetism which forms those tremendous forces of nature. . .
. It is not at all
to the sun that we are indebted for light and heat; light is
a creation sui
generis, which springs into existence at the instant when
the deity willed." She
"laughs at the current theory of the incandescence of
the sun and its gaseous
substance. . . . The sun, planets, stars and nebulae are all
magnets. . . .
There is but One Magnet in the universe and from it proceeds
the magnetization
of everything existing."29
It is this same universal ether and its inherent magnetic
dynamism that sets the
field for astrology, as a cosmic science. Of this she says
that astrology is a
science as infallible as astronomy itself, provided its
interpreters are as
infallible as the mathematicians. She carries the law of the
instantaneous.76
interrelation of everything in the cosmos to such an extent
that, quoting
Eliphas Levi, "even so small a thing as the birth of
one child upon our
insignificant planet has its effect upon the universe, as
the whole universe has
its reflective influence upon him." The bodies of the
entire universe are bound
together by attractions which hold them in equilibrium, and
these magnetic
influences are the bases of astrology.
With so much cosmic power at his behest, man has done
wonders; and we are asked
to accept the truth of an amazing series of the most
phenomenal occurrences ever
seriously given forth. They range over so varied a field
that any attempt at
classification is impossible. Of physical phenomena she says
that the ancients
could make marble statues sweat, and even speak and leap!
They had gold lamps
which burned in tombs continuously for seven hundred to one
thousand years
without refueling! One hundred and seventy-three authorities
are said to have
testified to the existence of such lamps. Even
"Aladdin's magical lamp has also
certain claims to reality." There was an asbestos oil
whose properties, when it
was rubbed on the skin, made the body impervious to the
action of fire.
Witnesses are quoted as stating that they observed natives
in Africa who
permitted themselves to be fired at point blank with a
revolver, having first
precipitated around them an impervious layer of astral or
akashic substance.
Cardinal de Rohan's testimony is adduced to the effect that
he had seen
Cagliostro make gold and diamonds. The power of the evil eye
is enlarged upon
and instances recounted of persons hypnotizing,
"charming," or even killing
birds and animals with a look. She avers that she herself
had seen Eastern
Adepts turn water into blood. Observers are quoted who
reported a rope-climbing
feat in China and Batavia, in which the human climbers
disappeared overhead,
their members fell in portions on the ground, and shortly
thereafter reunited to
form the original living bodies! Stories are narrated of
fakirs disemboweling
and re-embowling themselves. She herself saw whirling
dancers at Petrovsk in
1865, who cut themselves in frenzy and evoked by the magical
powers of blood the
spirits of the dead, with whom they then danced. Twice she
was nearly bitten by
poisonous snakes, but was saved by a word of control from a
Shaman or conjurer.
The close affinity between man and nature is illustrated by
the statement that
in one case a tree died following the death of its human
twin. Speaking of
magical trees, she several times tells of the great tree
Kumboum, of Tibet, over
whose leaves and bark nature had imprinted ten thousand
spiritual maxims. The
magical significance of birthmarks is brought out, with
remarkable instances.
She dwells at length on the inability of medical men to tell
definitely whether
the human body is dead or not, and cites a dozen gruesome
tales of reawakening
in the grave. This takes her into vampirism, which she
establishes on the basis
of numerous cases taken mostly from Russian folklore. It is
stated that the
Hindu pantheon claimed 330,000,000 types of spirits. Moses
was familiar with
electricity; the Egyptians had a high order of music and
chess over five
thousand years ago; and anaesthesia was known to the
ancients. Perpetual motion,
the Elixer of Life, the Fountain of Youth and the
Philosopher's Stone are
declared to be real. She adduces in every case a formidable
show of testimony
other than her own. And back of it all is her persistent
assertion that purity
of life and thought is a requisite for high magical
performance.
"A man free from worldly incentives and sensuality may
cure in such a way the
most 'incurable' diseases, and his vision may become clear
and prophetic."30
"The magic power is never possessed by those addicted
to vicious indulgences."31
Phenomena come, she feels, rather easily; spiritual life is
harder won and
worthier..77
"With expectancy, supplemented by faith, one can cure
himself of almost any
morbific condition. The tomb of a saint; a holy relic; a
talisman; a bit of
paper or a garment that has been handled by a supposed
healer; a nostrum, a
penance; a ceremonial; a laying on of hands; or a few words
impressively
pronounced-will do. It is a question of temperament,
imagination, self-cure."32
"While phenomena of a physical nature may have their
value as a means of
arousing the interest of materialists, and confirming, if
not wholly, at least
inferentially, our belief in the survival of our souls, it
is questionable
whether, under their present aspect, the modern phenomena
are not doing more
harm than good."33
Theosophists themselves often quarrel with Isis because it
seems to overstress
bizarre phenomena. They should see that Volume I of the book
aims to show the
traces of magic in ancient science, in order to offset the
Spiritualist claims
to new discoveries, and to attract attention to the more
philosophic ideas
underlying classic magic. Volume II labors to reveal the
presence of a vast
occultism behind the religions and theologies of the world.
Again the contention
is that the ancient priests knew more than the modern
expositor, that they kept
more concealed than the present-day theologian has revealed.
Modern theology has
lost its savor of early truth and power, as modern
technology no longer
possesses the "lost arts." Paganism was to be
vindicated as against
ecclesiastical orthodoxies.
She believed that her instruction under the Lamas or Adepts
in Tibet had given
her this key, and that therefore the whole vast territory of
ancient religion
lay unfruitful for modern understanding until she should
come forward and put
the key to the lock. The "key" makes her in a
sense the exponent and depository
of "the essential veracities of all the religions and
philosophies that are or
ever were."
"Myth was the favorite and universal method of teaching
in archaic times."34
We can not be oblivious of the use made by Plato of myths in
his theoretical
constructions.
"Fairy tales do not exclusively belong to nurseries;
all mankind-except those
few who in all ages have comprehended their hidden meaning,
and tried to open
the eyes of the superstitious-have listened to such tales in
one shape or other,
and, after transforming them into sacred symbols, called the
product
Religion."35
"There are a few myths in any religious system but have
an historical as well as
a scientific foundation. Myths, as Pococke ably expresses
it, 'are now found to
be fables just in proportion as we misunderstand them;
truths, in proportion as
they were once understood.'"36
The esotericism of the teachings of Christ and the Buddha is
manifest to anyone
who can reason, she declares. Neither can be supposed to
have given out all that
a divine being would know.
"It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing
upon him four gospels,
in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a
single narrative,
sentence or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be
found in some older
doctrine of philosophy. Surely the Almighty-were it but to
spare future
generations their present perplexity-might have brought down
with Him, at His
first and only incarnation on earth, something
original-something that would.78
trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the
score or so of
incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all
been saviors, and
were either killed or were otherwise sacrificed for
humanity."37
She says that not she but the Christian Fathers and their
successors in the
church have put their divine Son of God in the position of a
poor religious
plagiarist!
Ancient secret wisdom was seldom written down at all; it was
taught orally, and
imparted as a priceless tradition by one set of students to
their qualified
successors. Those receiving it regarded themselves as its
custodians and they
accepted their stewardship conscientiously.
To understand the reason for esotericism in science and
religion in earlier
times, Madame Blavatsky urges us to recall that freedom of
speech invited
persecution.
"The Rosicrucian, Hermetic and Theosophical Western
writers, producing their
books in epochs of religious ignorance and cruel bigotry,
wrote, so to say, with
the headman's axe suspended over their necks, or the
executioner's fagots laid
under their chairs, and hid their divine knowledge under
quaint symbols and
misleading metaphors."38
To give lesser people what they could not appropriate, to
stir complacent
conservatism with that threat of disturbing old established
habitudes which
higher knowledge always brings, was unsafe in a world still
actuated by codes of
arbitrary physical power. High knowledge had to be esoteric
until the progress
of general enlightenment brought the masses to a point where
the worst that
could happen to the originator of revolutionary ideas would
be the reputation of
an idiot, instead of the doom of a Bruno or a Joan. Madame
Blavatsky was willing
to be regarded as an idiot, but her Masters could not send
her forth until
autos-da-fι had gone out of vogue.
We have seen in an earlier
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER that the Mystery Religions of the Eastern
Mediterranean world harbored an esotericism that presumably
influenced the
formulation of later systems, notably Judaism and
Christianity. In recent
decades more attention has been given to the claims of these
old secret
societies. St. Paul's affiliation with them is claimed by
Theosophists, and his
obvious indebtedness to them is acknowledged by some
students of early
Christianity. It is impossible for Madame Blavatsky to
understand the Church's
indifference to its origins, and she arrays startling
columns of evidence to
show that this neglect may be fatal. The Mystery Schools,
she proclaims, were
not shallow cults, but the guardians of a deep lore already
venerable.
"The Mysteries are as old as the world, and one well
versed in the esoteric
mythologies of various nations, can trace them back to the
days of the Ante-Vedic
period in India."39
She does not soften her animosity against those influences
and agencies that she
charges with culpability for smothering out the Gnosis. The
culprit in the case
is Christianity.
"For over fifteen centuries, thanks to the
blindly-brutal persecution of those
great vandals of early Christian history, Constantine and
Justinian, ancient
wisdom slowly degenerated until it gradually sank into the
deepest mire of
monkish superstition and ignorance. The Pythagorean
'knowledge of things that
are'; the profound erudition of the Gnostics; the world- and
time-honored.79
teachings of the great philosophers; all were rejected as
doctrines of
Antichrist and Paganism and committed to the flames. With
the last seven Wise
Men of the Orient, the remnant group of Neo-Platonists,
Hermias, Priscianus,
Diogenes, Eulalius, Damaskius, Simplicius and Isodorus, who
fled from the
fanatical persecutions of Justinian to Persia, the reign of
wisdom closed. The
books of Thoth . . . containing within their sacred pages
the spiritual and
physical history of the creation and progress of our world,
were left to mould
in oblivion and contempt for ages. They found no
interpreters in Christian
Europe; the Philalethians, or wise 'lovers of truth' were no
more; they were
replaced by the light-fleers, the tonsured and hooded monks
of Papal Rome, who
dread truth, in whatever shape and from whatever quarter it
appears, if it but
clashes in the least with their dogmas."40
She speaks of the
"Jesuitical and crafty spirit which prompted the
Christian Church of the late
third century to combat the expiring Neo-Platonic and
Eclectic Schools. The
Church was afraid of the Aristotelian dialectic and wished
to conceal the true
meaning of the word daemon, Rasit, asdt (emanations); for if
the truth of the
emanations were rightly understood, the whole structure of
the new religion
would have crumbled along with the Mysteries."41
This motive is stressed again when she says that the Fathers
had borrowed so
much from Paganism that they had to obliterate the traces of
their
appropriations or be recognized by all as merely
Neo-Platonists! She is keen to
point out the value of the riches thus thrown away or
blindly overlooked, and to
show how Christianity has been placed at the mercy of
hostile disrupting forces
because of its want of a true Gnosis. She avers that
atheists and materialists
now gnaw at the heart of Christianity because it is
helpless, lacking the
esoteric knowledge of the spiritual constitution of the
universe, to combat or
placate them. Gnosticism taught man that he could attain the
fulness of the
stature of his innate divinity; Christianity substituted a
weakling's reliance
upon a higher power. Had Christianity held onto the Gnosis
and Kabbalism, it
would not have had to graft itself onto Judaism and thus tie
itself down to many
of the developments of a merely tribal religion. Had it not
accepted the Jehovah
of Moses, she says, it would not have been forced to look
upon the Gnostic ideas
as heresies, and the world would now have had a religion
richly based on pure
Platonic philosophy and "surely something would then
have been gained." Rome
itself, Christianized, paid a heavy penalty for spurning the
wisdom of old:
"In burning the works of the theurgists; in proscribing
those who affected their
study; in affixing the stigma of demonolatry to magic in
general; Rome has left
her exoteric worship and Bible to be helplessly riddled by
every free-thinker,
her sexual emblems to be identified with coarseness, and her
priests to
unwittingly turn magicians and sorcerers in their exorcisms.
Thus retribution,
by the exquisite adjustment of divine law, is made to
overtake this scheme of
cruelty, injustice and bigotry, through her own suicidal
acts."42
Yet Christianity drew heavily from paganism. It erected
almost no novel
formulations. Christian canonical books are hardly more than
plagiarisms of
older literatures, she affirms, compiled, deleted, revised,
and twisted. She
believed that the first
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTERs of Genesis were based on the "Chaldean" Kabbala
and an old Brahmanical book of prophecies (really later than
Genesis). The
doctrine of the Trinity as purely Platonic, she says. It was
Irenaeus who
identified Jesus with the "mask of the Logos or Second
Person of the Trinity."
The doctrine of the Atonement came from the Gnostics. The
Eucharist was common
before Christ's time. Some Neo-Platonist, not John, is
alleged to have written.80
the Fourth Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is an echo of the
essential
principles of monastic Buddhism.
Jesus is torn away from allegiance to the Jewish system and
stands neither as
its product nor its Messiah. Wresting him away from Judaism,
and likewise from
the emanational Trinity, both of which rτles were thrust
upon him gratuitously
by the Christian Fathers, she declares him to have been a
Nazarene, i.e., a
member of the mystic cult of Essenes of Nazars, which
perpetuated Oriental
systems of the Gnosis on the shores of the Jordan.
"One Nazarene sect is known to have existed some 150
years B.C. and to have
lived on the banks of the Jordan, and on the eastern shore
of the Dead Sea,
according to Pliny and Josephus. But in King's 'Gnostics' we
find quoted another
statement by Josephus from verse 13 which says that the
Essenes had been
established on the shores of the Dead Sea 'for thousands of
ages' before Pliny's
time."43
Jesus, one of this cult, had become adept in the occult
philosophies of Egypt
and Israel, and endeavored to make of the two a synthesis,
drawing at times on
more ancient knowledge from the old Hindu doctrines. He was
simply a devout
occultist and taught among the people what they could
receive of the esoteric
knowledge, reserving his deeper teachings for his fellows in
the Essene
monasteries. He had learned in the East and in Egypt the
high science of
theurgy, casting out of demons, and control of nature's
finer forces, and he
used these powers upon occasion. He posed as no Messiah or
Incarnation of the
Logos, but preached the message of the anointing (Christos)
of the human spirit
by its baptismal union with the higher principles of our
divine nature.44
In short, Madame Blavatsky leaves to Christianity little but
the very precarious
distinction of having "copied all its rites, dogmas and
ceremonies from
paganism" save two that can be claimed as original
inventions-the doctrine of
eternal damnation (with the fiction of the Devil) "and
the one custom, that of
the anathema."
"The Bible of the Christian Church is the latest
receptacle of this scheme of
disfigured allegories which have been erected into an
edifice of superstition,
such as never entered into the conceptions of those from
whom the Church
obtained her knowledge. The abstract fictions of antiquity,
which for ages had
filled the popular fancy with but flickering shadows and
uncertain images, have
in Christianity assumed the shapes of real personages and
become historical
facts. Allegory metamorphosed, becomes sacred history, and
Pagan myth is taught
to the people as a revealed narrative of God's intercourse
with His chosen
people."45
The final proposition which Isis labors to establish is that
the one source of
all the wisdom of the past is India. Pythagoreanism, she
says, is identical with
Buddhistic teachings. "The laws of Manu are the
doctrines of Plato, Philo,
Zoroaster, Pythagoras and the Kabala." She quotes
Jacolliot, the French writer:
"This philosophy, the traces of which we find among the
Magians, the Chaldeans,
the Egyptians, the Hebrew Kabalists, and the Christians, is
none other than that
of the Hindu Brahmans, the sectarians of the pitris, or the
spirits of the
invisible worlds which surround us."46
She, with the key in her hand, sees the solution of the
problem of comparative
religion as an easy one..81
"While we see the few translators of the Kabala, the
Nazarene Codex and other
abstruse works, hopelessly floundering amid the interminable
pantheon of names,
unable to agree as to a system in which to classify them,
for the one hypothesis
contradicts and overturns the other, we can but wonder at
all this trouble,
which could be so easily overcome. But even now, when the
translation and even
the perusal of the ancient Sanskrit has become so easy as a
point of comparison,
they would never think it possible that every
philosophy-whether Semitic,
Hamitic or Turanian, as they call it, has its key in the
Hindu sacred works.
Still, facts are there and facts are not easily
destroyed."47
"What has been contemptuously termed Paganism was
ancient Wisdom replete with
Deity. . . . Pre-Vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism are the
double source from which
all religions spring; Nirvana is the ocean to which all
tend."48
She says there are many parallelisms between references to
Buddha and to Christ.
Many points of identity also exist between
Lamaico-Buddhistic and Roman Catholic
ceremonies. The idea here hinted at is the underlying thesis
of the whole
Theosophic position. Successive members of the great
Oriental Brotherhood have
been incarnated at intervals in the history of mankind, each
giving out portions
of the one central doctrine, which therefore must have a
common base. The
puzzling identities found in the study ofComparative Religion
thus find an
explanation in the identity of their authorship.
Mrs. Annie Besant later elaborated this view in the early
pages of her work,
Esoteric Christianity. She contrasts it with the commonly
accepted explanation
of religious origins of the academicians of our day. Summing
up this position
she writes:
"The Comparative Mythologists contend that the common
origin is a common
ignorance, and that the loftiest religious doctrines are
simply refined
expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses of savages,
of primitive men,
regarding themselves and their surroundings. Animism,
fetishism, nature-worship-these
are the constituents of the primitive mud out of which has
grown the
splendid lily of religion. A Krishna, a Buddha, a Lao-Tze, a
Jesus, are the
highly civilized, but lineal descendants of the whirling
medicine-men of the
savage. God is a composite photograph of the innumerable
gods who are the
personifications of the forces of nature. It is all summed
up in the phrase:
Religions are branches from a common trunk-human ignorance.
"The Comparative Religionists consider, on the other
hand, that all religions
originated from the teachings of Divine Men, who gave out to
the different
nations, from time to time, such parts of the verities of
religion as the people
are capable of receiving, teaching ever the same morality,
inculcating the use
of similar means, employing the same significant symbols.
The savage religions-animism
and the rest-are degenerations, the results of decadence,
distorted and
dwarfed descendants of true religious beliefs. Sun-worship
and pure forms of
nature worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly
allegorical, but full
of profound truth and knowledge. The great Teachers . . .
form an enduring
Brotherhood of men, who have risen beyond humanity, who
appear at certain
periods to enlighten the world, and who are the spiritual
guardians of the human
race. This view may be summed up in the phrase: Religions
are branches from a
common trunk-Divine Wisdom."49
This is the view of religions which Madame Blavatsky
presented in Isis.
Religions, it would say, never rise; they only degenerate.
Theosophic writers50
are at pains to point out that once a pure high religious
impulse is given by a
Master-Teacher, it tends before long to gather about it the
incrustations of the.82
human materializing tendency, under which the spiritual
truths are obscured and
finally lost amid the crudities of literalism. Then after
the world has
blundered on through a period of darkness the time grows
ripe for a new
revelation, and another member of the Spiritual Fraternity
comes into
terrestrial life. Madame Blavatsky says:
"The very corner-stone of their (Brahmans' and
Buddhists') religious systems is
periodical incarnations of the Deity. Whenever humanity is
about merging into
materialism and moral degradation, a Supreme Being
incarnates himself in his
creature selected for the purpose, . . . Christna saying to
Arjuna (in the
Bhagavad Gita): 'As often as virtue declines in the world, I
make myself
manifest to save it.'"51
Madame Blavatsky stated that she was in contact with several
of these supermen,
who sent her forth as their messenger to impart, in new
form, the old knowledge..83
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VI
THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR LETTERS
The Masters whom Theosophy presents to us are simply
high-ranking students in
life's school of experience. They are members of our own
evolutionary group, not
visitants from the celestial spheres. They are supermen only
in that they have
attained knowledge of the laws of life and mastery over its
forces with which we
are still struggling. They are also termed by Theosophists
the "just men made
perfect," the finished products of our terrene
experience, those more earnest
souls of our own race who have pressed forward to attain the
fulness of the
stature of Christ, the prize of the high calling of God in
Christhood. They are
not Gods come down to earth, but earthly mortals risen to
the status of Christs.
They ask from us no reverence, no worship; they demand no
allegiance but that
which it is expected we shall render to the principles of
Truth and Fact, and to
the nobility of life. They are our "Elder Brothers,"
not distant deities; and
will even make their presence known to us and grant us the
privilege of
coφperating with them when we have shown ourselves capable
of working
unselfishly for mankind. They are not our Masters in the
sense of holding
lordship over us; they are the "Masters of Wisdom and
Compassion." Moved by an
infinite sympathy with the whole human race they have
renounced their right to
go forward to more splendid conquests in the evolutionary
field, and have
remained in touch with man in order to throw the weight of
their personal force
on the side of progress.
But the rank of the Mahatmas must not be underrated because
they still fall
under the category of human beings. They have accumulated
vast stores of
knowledge about the life of man and the universe; about the
meaning and purpose
of evolution; the methods of progress; the rationale of the
expansion of the
powers latent in the Ego; the choice and attainment of ends
and values in life;
and the achievement of beauty and grandeur in individual
development. Upon all
these questions which affect the life and happiness of
mortals they possess
competent knowledge which they are willing to impart to
qualified students. They
have by virtue of their own force of character mastered
every human problem,
perfected their growth in beauty, gained control over all
the natural forces of
life. They stand at the culmination of all human endeavor.
They have lifted
mortality up to immortality, have carried humanity aloft to
divinity. Through
the mediatorship of the Christos, or spiritual principle in
them, they have
reconciled the carnal nature of man, his animal soul, with
the essential
divinity of his higher Self. And they, if they have been
lifted up, stand
patiently eager to draw all men unto them.
Madame Blavatsky's exploitation of the Adepts (or their
exploitation of her) is
a startling event in the modern religious drama. It was a
unique procedure and
took the world by surprise. To be sure, India and Tibet,
even China, were
familiar with the idea of supermen. India had its Buddhas,
Boddhisatvas, and
Rishis. But what not even India was prepared to view without
suspicion was that.84
several of the hierarchical Brotherhood should carry on a
clandestine
intercourse with a nondescript group, made up of a Russian,
an American, and
several Englishmen, and issue to them fragments of the
ancient lore for
broadcasting to the incredulous West, which would mock it,
scorn it, and trample
it underfoot.
It was only justified, according to Madame Blavatsky, by
certain considerations
which influenced the final decision of the Great White
Brotherhood Council.
Majority opinion was against the move; but the minority
urged that two reasons
rendered it advisable. The guillotine and the fagot pile had
been eliminated
from the historical forms of martyrdom; and, secondly, the
esotericism of the
doctrines was, in a manner, an automatic safety device. The
teachings would
appeal to those who were "ready" for them; their
meaning would soar over the
heads of those for whom they were not suited.
The matter was decided affirmatively, we are informed, by
the assumption of full
karmic responsibility for the launching of the crusade by
the two Adepts, Morya
and Koot Hoomi Lal Singh. The latter, in the early portion
of his present
incarnation, had been a student at an English University and
felt that he had
found sufficient reliability on the part of intelligent
Europeans to make them
worthy to receive the great knowledge. Morya, we are told,
had taken on Madame
Blavatsky as his personal attachι, pupil or chela. She had
earned in former
situations the right to the high commission of carrying the
old truth to the
world at large in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.
It is hinted that Madame Blavatsky had formed a close link
with the Master Morya
in former births, when she was known to him as a great
personage. It is also
said that she was herself kept from full admission to the
Brotherhood only by
some special "Karma" which needed to be
"worked out" in a comparatively humble
station and personality during this life. She said the
Masters knew what she was
accountable for, though it was not the charlatanism the
world at large charged
her with. We are led to assume that the Master Morya exercised
a guardianship
over her in early life, and later, that he occasionally
manifested himself to
her, giving her suggestions and encouragement. One or two of
these encounters
with her Master are recorded. She met him in his physical
body in London in
1851. In one of her old note-books, which her aunt Madame
Fadeef sent to her in
Wόrzburg in 1885, there is a memorandum of her meeting with
Morya in London. The
entry is as follows:
"Nuit mιmorable. Certaine nuit par un clair de lune que
se couchait ΰ-Ramsgate--
12 aoϋt, 1851,--lorsque je rencontrai le Maξtre de mes
rκves."
Hints are thrown out as to other meetings on her travels,
and we are told that
she studied ancient philosophy and science under the
Master's direct tutelage in
Tibet covering periods aggregating at least seven years of
her life. The
testimony of Col. Olcott is no less precise. He says:
"I had ocular proof that at least some of those who
worked with us were living
men, from having seen them in the flesh in India, after
having seen them in the
astral body in America and in Europe; from having touched
and talked with them.
Instead of telling me that they were spirits, they told me
they were as much
alive as myself, and that each of them had his own
peculiarities and
capabilities, in short, his complete individuality. They
told me that what they
had attained to I should one day myself acquire, how soon
would depend entirely
on myself; and that I might not anticipate anything whatever
from favor, but,
like them, must gain every step, every inch, of progress by
my own exertions."1.85
The fact that the Masters were living human beings made
their revelations of
cosmic and spiritual truth, say the Theosophists, more
valuable than alleged
revelations from hypothetical Gods in other systems of belief.
That their
knowledge is, in a manner of speaking, human instead of
heavenly or "divine"
should give it greater validity for us. The Mahatmas were,
it is said, in direct
contact with the next higher grades of intelligent beings
standing above them in
the hierarchical order, so that their teachings have the
double worth of high
human and supernal authority. This, occultists believe,
affords the most
trustworthy type of revelation.
It was not until the two Theosophic Founders had reached
India, in whose
northernmost vastnesses the members of the Great White
Brotherhood were said to
maintain their earthly residence, that continuous evidence
of their reality and
their leadership was vouchsafed. The Theosophic case for
Adept revelation rests
upon a long-continued correspondence between persons (Mr. A.
P. Sinnett, mainly,
Mr. A. O. Hume, Damodar and others in minor degree) of good
intelligence, but
claiming no mystical or psychical illumination, and the two
Mahatmas, K.H. and
M. Sinnett, Editor of The Pioneer, at Simla in northern
India, was an English
journalist of distinction and ability. Although he had
manifested no special
temperamental disposition toward the mystical or occult, he
was the particular
recipient of the attention and favors of the Mahatmas over a
space of three or
four years, beginning about 1879. It was at his own home in
Simla, later at
Allahabad, that most of the letters were received, addressed
to him personally.
Most, if not all, were in answer to the queries which he was
permitted, if not
invited, to ask his respected teachers.
Mr. Sinnett's book, The Occult World, was the first direct
statement to the West
of the existence of the Masters and their activity as
sponsors for the
Theosophical Society. He undertook the onerous task of
vindicating, as far as
argument and the phenomenal material in his hands could, the
title of these
supermen to the possession of surpassing knowledge and
sublime wisdom. His work
supplemented that of Madame Blavatsky in Isis, yet it went
beyond the latter in
asserting the connection of the Theosophical Society with an
alleged association
of perfected individuals. It put the Theosophical Society
squarely on record as
an organization, not merely for the purpose of eclectic
research, but standing
for the promulgation of a body of basic truths of an
esoteric sort and
arrogating to itself a position of unique eminence in a
spiritual world order.
In the Introduction to The Occult World Mr. Sinnett
elaborates his apologetic
for the general theory of Mahatmic existence and knowledge.
Fundamental for his
argument is, of course, the theory of reincarnational
continuity of development
which would enable individual humans, through long
experience, to attain degrees
of learning far in advance of the majority of the race. But
his "proofs" of both
the existence and the superior knowledge of these
exceptional beings are offered
in the book itself, in which his experience with them, and
the material of some
of their letters to him, are presented. His introductory
dissertation is a
justification of the Mahatmic policy of maintaining their
priceless knowledge in
futile obscurity within the narrow confines of their
exclusive Brotherhood. He
then attempts to rectify our scornful point of view as
regards esotericism. Of
the superlative wisdom of the Masters he posits his own
direct knowledge. The
Brothers are to him empirically real. But the logical
justification of their
attitude of seclusion and aloofness, or worse, of their
selfish appropriation of
knowledge which it must be assumed would be of immense
social value if
disseminated, is the point upon which he chiefly labors.
"There is a school of philosophy," he says,
"still in existence of which modern
culture has lost sight . . . modern metaphysics, and to a
large extent modern.86
physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly
after knowledge which
occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while.
Owing to a train of
fortunate circumstances I have come to know that this is the
case; I have come
into contact with persons who are heirs of a greater
knowledge concerning the
mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet
evolved. . . .
Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open
method of
investigation, and is very impatient of the theory that
persons who have
attained to real knowledge, either in science or
metaphysics, could have been
content to hide their light under a bushel. . . . But there
is no need to
construct hypotheses in the matter. The facts are accessible
if they are sought
for in the right way."2
Spiritual science is foremost with the Adepts; physical
science being of
secondary importance. The main strength of occultism has
been devoted to the
science of metaphysical energy and to the development of
faculties in man, not
instruments outside him, which will yield him actual
experimental knowledge of
the subtle powers in nature. It aims to gain actual and
exact knowledge of
spiritual things which, under all other systems, remain the
subject of
speculation or blind religious faith.
Summing up the extraordinary powers which Adeptship gives
its practitioners, he
says they are chiefly the ability to dissociate
consciousness from the body, to
put it instantaneously in rapport with other minds anywhere
on the earth, and to
exert magical control over the sublimated energies of
matter. Occultism
postulates a basic differentiation between the principles of
mind, soul, and
spirit, and gives a formal technique for their interrelated
development. It has
evolved a practique, also, based on the spiritual
constitution of matter, which,
it alleges, vastly facilitates human growth. The skilled
occultist is able to
shift his consciousness from one to another plane of
manifestation. In short,
his control over the vibrational energies of the Akasha
makes him veritably lord
of all the physical creation.
The members of the Brotherhood remain in more or less
complete seclusion among
the Himalayas because, as they have said, they find contact
with the coarse
heavy currents of ordinary human emotionalism-violent
feeling, material
grasping, and base ambitions-painful to their sensitive
organization. This great
fraternity is at once the least and most exclusive body in
the world; it is
composed of the world's very elect, yet any human being is
eligible. He must
have demonstrated his possession of the required
qualifications, which are so
high that the average mortal must figure on aeons of
education before he can
knock at the portals of their spiritual society. The road
thither is beset with
many real perils, which no one can safely pass till he has
proven his mastery
over his own nature and that of the world.
"The ultimate development of the adept requires amongst
other things a life of
absolute physical purity, and the candidate must, from the
beginning, give
practical evidence of his willingness to adopt this. He must
. . . for all the
years of his probation, be perfectly chaste, perfectly
abstemious, and
indifferent to physical luxury of every sort. This regimen
does not involve any
fantastic discipline or obtrusive ascetism, nor withdrawal
from the world. There
would be nothing to prevent a gentleman in ordinary society
from being in some
of the preliminary stages of training without anybody about
him being the wiser.
For true occultism, the sublime achievement of the real
adept, is not attained
through the loathsome ascetism of the ordinary Indian
fakeer, the yogi of the
woods and wilds, whose dirt accumulates with his sanctity-of
the fanatic who
fastens iron hooks into his flesh or holds up an arm till it
withers."3.87
How did the Mahatmas impart their teaching? Mr. Sinnett was
the channel of
transmission, and to him the two Masters sent a long series
of letters on
philosophical and other subjects, they themselves remaining
in the background.
The Mahatma Letters themselves, as originally received by
Mr. Sinnett, were not
published until 1925.4 Sinnett, early in his acquaintance
with the Masters,
asked K.H. for the privilege of a personal interview with
him. The Master
declined. His messages came in the form of long letters
which dropped into his
possession by facile means that would render the Post Office
authorities of any
nation both envious and sceptical. The correspondence began
when Madame
Blavatsky suggested that Mr. Sinnett write certain questions
which were on his
mind in a letter addressed to K.H., saying she would
dispatch it to him, several
hundred miles distant, by the exercise of her magnetic
powers. She would
accompany it with the request for a reply. The idea in Mr.
Sinnett's mind was
one which he thought, could the Adept actually carry it out,
would demonstrate
at one stroke the central theses of occultism and
practically revolutionize the
whole trend of human thinking. His suggestion to K.H. in
that first letter was
that the Mahatma should use his superior power to reproduce
in far-off India, on
the same morning on which it issued from the press, a full
copy of the London
Times. Madame Blavatsky disintegrated the missive and wafted
its particles to
the hermit in the mountains. The answer came in two days.
The test of the London
newspaper, he wrote, was inadmissible precisely because
"it would close the
mouths of the sceptics." The world is unprepared for so
convincing a
demonstration of supernormal powers, he argued, because, on
the one hand the
event would throw the principles and formulae of science
into chaos, and on the
other, it would demolish the structure of the concepts of
natural law by the
restoration of the belief in "miracle." The result
would thus be disastrous for
both science and faith. Incompetent as the thesis of
mechanistic naturalism is
to provide mortals with the ground of understanding of the
deeper phenomena of
life and mind, it does less harm on the whole than would a
return to arrant
superstition such as must follow in the wake of the wonder
Sinnett had proposed.
The Master asked his correspondent if the modern world had
really thrown off the
shackles of ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry to a
sufficient extent to
enable it to withstand the shock that such an occurrence
would bring to its
fixed ideas. If this one test were furnished, he went on,
Western incredulity
would in a moment ask for others and still others; shrewd
ingenuity would devise
ever more bizarre performances; and since not all the
millions of sceptics could
be given ocular demonstrations, the net outcome of the whole
procedure would be
confusion and unhappiness. The mass of humanity must feel
its way slowly toward
these high powers, and the premature exhibition of future
capacity would but
overwhelm the mind and unsettle the poise of people
everywhere.
Mr. Sinnett replied, venturing to believe "that the
European mind was less
hopelessly intractable than Koot Hoomi had represented
it." The Master's second
letter continued his protestations:
"The Mysteries never were, never can be, put within
reach of the general public,
not, at least, until the longed-for day when our religious
philosophy becomes
universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable
minority of men
possessed Nature's secret, though multitudes have witnessed
the practical
evidences of the possibility of their possession."
Letters followed on both sides, Mr. Sinnett taking advantage
of many
opportunities afforded by varying circumstances in each case
to fortify his
assurance that Madame Blavatsky herself was not inditing the
replies in the name
of the Adept. Frequently replies came, containing specific
reference to detailed
matters in his missives, when she had not been out of his
sight during the
interim between the despatch and the return. The letters
came and went as well.88
when she was hundreds of miles away. The answers would often
be found in his
locked desk drawer, sometimes inside his own letter, the
seal of which had not
been broken. On occasion the Mahatma's reply dropped from
the open air upon his
desk while he was watching.
Madame Blavatsky and the Master both explained the method by
which the letters
were written. Theoretically, they were not written at all,
but "precipitated."
Among the Adept's occult or "magical" powers is
that of impressing upon the
surface of some material, as paper, the images which he
holds vividly before his
mind. He may thus impress or imprint a photograph, a scene,
or a word, or
sentence, upon parchment. He uses materials, of course,
paper, ink or pencil
graphite. But in his ability to disintegrate atomic
combinations of matter, he
can seize upon the material present, or even at a distance,
and "precipitate" or
reintegrate it, in conformity with the lines of his strong
thought-energies. He
can thus image a sentence, word for word, in his mind, and
then pour the current
of atomic material into the given form of the letters, upon
the plane of the
paper. The idiosyncrasies of his own chirography would be
carried through the
mental process. K.H., we are told, always used blue ink or
blue pencil, while
the epistles from M. always came in red. Specimens of the
two handwritings are
given in the frontispiece of the Mahatma Letters. The art of
occult
precipitation appears still more marvelous when we are told
by Madame Blavatsky
that the Adept did not attend to the actual precipitation
himself but delegated
it to one of his distant chelas, who caught his Master's
thought-forms in the
Astral Light and set them down by the chemical process which
he had been taught
to employ. The Master thus needed only to think vividly the
words of his
sentences, so as to impress them upon the mind of his pupil,
and the latter did
the rest. This was explained by H.P.B. in an article, Lodges
of Magic, in
Lucifer, Oct., 1888, while she was being accused of issuing
false messages from
the Master.
"For it is hardly one out of one hundred 'Occult'
letters that is ever written
by the hand of the Masters in whose names and on whose
behalf they are sent, as
the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; and
that when a Master
says: 'I wrote that letter,' it means only that every word
in it was dictated by
him and impressed under his direct supervision. Generally
they make their chela
. . . write (or precipitate) them. It depends entirely upon
the chela's state of
development how accurately the ideas may be transmitted and
the writing model
imitated. Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the
dilemma of uncertainty
whether if one letter is false, all may not be."
For example, when a Mr. Henry Kiddle, an American lecturer
on Spiritualism,
accused the writer of the Mahatma Letters of having plagiarized
whole passages
from his lecture delivered at Mt. Pleasant, New York, in
1880, a year prior to
the publication of The Occult World, the Master K.H.
explained in a letter to
Mr. Sinnett that the apparent forgery of words and ideas
came about through a
bit of carelessness on his part in the precipitation of his
ideas through a
chela. While dictating the letter to the latter, he had
caught himself
"listening in" on Mr. Kiddle's address being
delivered at the moment in America;
and as a consequence the chela took down portions of the
actual lecture as
reflected from the mind of K.H.
Mr. Sinnett used the opportunity thus given him to draw from
the Mahatma an
outline of a portion of the esoteric philosophy and science
which was presumed
to be in his custody. The Master exhibited readiness to
comply with Mr.
Sinnett's requests for information upon all vital and
important matters..89
Koot Hoomi tells Sinnett first that the world must prepare
itself for the
manifestation of phenomenal elements in constantly augmenting
volume and force.
The age of miracles, he says, is not past; it really never
was. Plato was right
in asserting that ideas ruled the world; and as the human
mind increases its
receptivity to larger ideas, the world will advance,
revolutions will spring
from the spreading ferment, creeds and powers will crumble
before their onward
march.
The duty set before intelligent people is to sweep away as
much as possible of
the dross left by our pious forefathers to make ready for
the apotheosis of
human life. The great new ideas
"touch man's true position in the universe, in relation
to his previous and
future births; his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation
of the mortal to
the immortal; of the temporary to the eternal; of the finite
to the infinite;
ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognizing the
universal reign of
Immutable Law, unchanging and unchangeable in regard to
which there is only an
Eternal Now, while to uninitiated mortals time is past or
future as related to
their finite existence on this material speck of dirt. This
is what we study and
what many have solved."5
Many old idols must be dethroned, chief of all being that of
an
anthropomorphized Deity, with its train of debasing
superstitions.
"And now," says K.H., "after making due
allowance for evils that are natural and
that cannot be avoided . . . I will point out the greatest,
the chief cause of
nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever
since that cause became
a power. It is religion, under whatever form and in whatever
nation. It is the
sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in
those illusions that
man looks upon as sacred that he has to search out the
source of that multitude
of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that
almost overwhelms
mankind. Ignorance created gods and cunning took advantage
of the opportunity.
Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism
and Fetichism. It is
priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to
man; it is religion
that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates
all mankind outside
his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral
for it. It is belief
in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves
of a handful of
those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving
them. . . . Remember
the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that
day when the better
portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, Morality
and universal
Charity the altars of their false Gods."6
He goes on to clarify and delimit his position:
"Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God,
least of all in one
whose pronoun necessitates a capital G. Our philosophy falls
under the
definition of Hobbes. It is preλminently the science of
effects by their causes
and of causes by their effects, and since it is also the
science of things
deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines it, before we
admit any such
principle we must know it, and have no right to admit even
its possibility. . .
. Therefore we deny God both as philosophers and as
Buddhists. We know there are
planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in
our system no such
thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is
not a God, but
absolute immutable law, and Ishwar is the effect of Avidya
(ignorance) and Maya
(illusion), ignorance based on the great delusion. The word
'God' was invented
to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man
has ever admired or
dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim-and
that we are able to.90
prove what we claim-i.e., the knowledge of that cause and
causes, we are in a
position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind
them."7
The causes assigned to phenomena by the Mahatmas, he says,
are natural,
sensible, supernatural, unintelligible, and unknown. The God
of the theologians
is simply an imaginary power, that has never yet manifested
itself to human
perception. The cause posited by the Adept is that power
whose activities we
behold in every phenomenon in the universe. They are
pantheists, never
agnostics. The Deity they envisage is everywhere present, as
well in matter as
elsewhere.
"In other words we believe in Matter alone, in matter
as visible nature and
matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent
omnipotent Proteus with
its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature
draws from herself,
since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can
exist. . . . The
existence of matter, then, is a fact; the existence of
motion is another fact,
their self-existence and eternity or indestructibility is a
third fact. And the
idea of pure Spirit as a Being or an Existence-give it
whatever name you will-is
a chimera, a gigantic absurdity."8
Furthermore, says K.H., your conceptions of an all-wise
Cosmic Mind or Being
runs afoul of sound logic on another count. You claim, he
says, that the life
and being of this God pervades and animates all the
universe. But even your own
science predicates of the cosmic material ether that it,
too, already permeates
all the ranges of being in nature. You are thus putting two
distinct pervading
essences in the universe. You are postulating two primordial
substances, two
basic elemental essences, where but one can be. Why posit an
imaginary substrate
when you already have a concrete one? Find your God in the
material you are sure
is there; do not forge a fiction and put it outside of real
existence to account
for that existence. Why constitute a false God when you have
a real Universe?
There is an illimitable Force in the universe, but even this
Force is not God,
since man may learn to bend it to his will. It is simply the
visible and
objective expression of the absolute substance in its
invisible and subjective
form.
From this strict and inexorable materialism K.H. seems to
relent a moment when
he says to Mr. Hume:
"I do not protest at all, as you seem to think, against
your theism, or a belief
in abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking
you, how do you or can
you know that your God is all-wise, omnipotent and love-ful,
when everything in
nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does
exist, to be quite
the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one
which seems to
overpower your very intellect!"9
The intricate problem, then, of how the blind and
unintelligent forces of matter
in motion do breed and have bred "highly intelligent
beings like ourselves" "is
covered by the eternal progression of cycles, and the
process of evolution ever
perfecting its work as it goes along." Intelligence
lies somehow in the womb of
matter, and evolution brings it to birth. Matter and spirit,
we must constantly
be reminded, are but the two polar aspects of the One
Substance.
The great philosophical problem of whether reality is
monistic or pluralistic
finds clear statement and elucidation in the Letters. It can
be gathered from
all the argument of K.H. that primordial nature is a monism,
but that when the
hidden energy, or sheer potentiality, of the unit principle
deploys into action,.91
or what the occultists speak of as manifestation, it splits,
first into a
duality, or polarization, and then into an infinity of
modifications arising
from varying intensities of vibration and modes of
combination. Through the
spectacles of time and space we see life as multiple; could
we be freed from the
limitations of our sensorium, however, we could see life
whole, as a single
essence. Non-polarized force is, in any terms of our
apperceptive nature, an
impossibility and a nonentity; pure spirit is a sheer
abstraction. Spirit must
be changed into matter, to be seen.
It is a silly philosophy which would exalt spirit and debase
matter, as many
ascetic or idealistic religious systems have done. Matter is
the garment of
spirit, and needs but to be beautified and refined. Spirit
is helpless without
it. "Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable
to manifest itself, hence
ceases to exist-becomes nihil."10 Likewise Spirit is
necessary to the faintest
stir of life in matter.
"Without Spirit or Force even that which Science styles
as 'not-living' matter,
the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could
never have been
called into form."11
Form will vanish the moment spirit is withdrawn from it.
"Matter, force and motion are the trinity of physical
objective nature, as the
trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual
or subjective
nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no
modes of motion can
ever be conceived unless they are in conjunction with
matter."12
"Unconscious and non-existing when separated, they
become consciousness and life
when brought together,"13
says K.H. in reference to the two poles of being. If the
spirit or force were to
fail, the electron would cease to swirl about the proton,
the atom would
collapse, the worlds would vanish. The world is an illusion
in the same way that
the solid appearance of the revolving spokes of a wheel is
an illusion. Stop the
swirl, and the universe not only collapses-it goes out of
manifestation.
A novel and startling corollary of the teaching that the
forces of nature are
"blind unconscious" laws, is seen in the query of
K.H. to Mr. Hume, whether it
had ever occurred to him that "universal, like finite
human mind, might have two
attributes or a dual power-one, the voluntary and conscious,
and the other the
involuntary and unconscious, or the mechanical power. To
reconcile the
difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions,
both these powers
are a philosophical necessity. . . . Take the human mind in
connection with the
body. Man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum . .
. the source of the
voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum-the fountain of the
involuntary nerves
which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical powers
of the mind to act
through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man
over his
involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings
of the heart and
respiration, especially during sleep-yet how far more
powerful, how much more
potential appears man as master and ruler over the blind
molecular motion . . .
than that which you will call God shows over the immutable
laws of nature.
Contrary in that to the finite, the 'infinite mind' . . .
exhibits but the
functions of its cerebellum."14
That Master admits that he is arguing the case for such a
duality of cosmic
mental function only on the basis of the theory that the
macrocosm is the.92
prototype of the microcosm, and that the high planetary
spirits themselves have
no more concrete evidence of the operation of a "cosmic
cerebrum" than we have.
The Master has taken many pages to detail to Mr. Sinnett the
information
relative to the evolution of the worlds from the nebular
mist, and the outline
of the whole cosmogonic scheme. As this will be dealt with
more fully in our
review of The Secret Doctrine, it need only be glanced at
here to give coherence
to the material in the Letters. Force or spirit descends
into matter and creates
or organizes the universes. Its immersion in the mineral
kingdom marks the
lowest or grossest point of its descent, and from there it
begins to return to
spirit, carrying matter up with it to self-consciousness.
Impulsions of life
energy emanate from "the heart of the universe"
and go quivering through the
various worlds, vivifying them and bringing to each in turn
its fitting grade of
living organisms. Thus came the races of men on our Earth,
which is now
harboring its Fifth great family, the Aryan.
What is of great interest in the scheme of Theosophy is that
"At the beginning of each Round, when humanity
reappears under quite different
conditions than those afforded by the birth of each new race
and its sub-races,
a 'Planetary' has to mix with these primitive men, and to
refresh their memories
and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding
Round. Hence the
confused traditions about Jehovahs, Ormazds, Osirises,
Brahms and the tutti
quanti. But that happens only for the benefit of the First
Race. It is the duty
of the latter to choose the fit recipients among its sons,
who are 'set apart'-to
use a Biblical phrase-as the vessels to contain the whole
stock of knowledge
to be divided among the future races and generations until
the close of that
Round. . . . Every race has its Adepts; and with every new
race we are allowed
to give them as much of our knowledge as the men of that
race deserve. The last
seventh race will have its Buddha, as every one of its
predecessors had."15
And then Koot Hoomi undertakes to meet the inevitable query:
What comes out of
the immense machinery of the cycles and globes and rounds?
"What emerges at the end of all things is not only
'pure and impersonal spirit,'
but the collected 'personal' remembrances" . . .16 The
individual, imperishable,
will enjoy the fruits of its collective lives.
If the Mahatma's attempt to solve the eternal riddle of the
"good" of earthly
life is not so complete and satisfactory as might have been
wished, we at least
gather from this interesting passage that its ultimate
meaning can be
ascertained only by our personal experience with every
changing form and aspect
of life itself. We must taste of all the modes of existence.
This inflicts upon
us the "cycle of necessity," the imperative
obligation to tread the weary wheel
of life on all the globes. We will know the "good"
of it all only by living
through it. There is no vindication for ethics, for
religion, for philosophy,
for teleology and optimism, save in life and experience
itself. Reason,
dialectic, can do nothing for us if life does not first
furnish us the material
content of the good. All we can do is look to life with the
confident
expectation that its processes will justify our wishes. We
must in the end stand
on faith. If life prove not ultimately sweet to the tasting,
no rationalization
will make it so.
We are assured, however, that the unit of personal
consciousness built up in the
process of cosmic evolution is never annihilated, but
expands until it becomes
inclusive of the highest. It enjoys the fruitage of its dull
incubations in the.93
lower worlds in its ever-enhancing capacities for a life
"whose glory and
splendor have no limits."
But, says K.H. immortality is quite a relative matter. Man,
being a compound
creature, is not entirely immortal. You know, he reminds us,
that the physical
body has no immortality. Neither the etheric double nor the
kama rupa (astral
body), nor yet the lower manasic (mental) principle survive
disintegration. Only
the Ego in the causal body holds its conscious existence
between lives on earth.
Even the planetary spirits, high as they are in the scale of
being, suffer
breaks in their conscious life,--the periods of pralaya. In
the true sense of
the term only the one life has absolute immortality, for it
is the only
existence which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break
in its continuity.
All lower aspects and embodiments have immortality, but with
periodic recessions
into inanition.
The problem of evil received treatment at K.H.'s hands, and
is summarized in the
statement that
"Evil has no existence per se and is but the absence of
good and exists but for
him who is made its victim. It proceeds from two causes, and
no more than good
is it an independent cause in nature. Nature is destitute of
goodness or malice;
she follows only immutable laws, when she either gives life
and joy or sends
suffering and death and destroys what she has created.
Nature has an antidote
for every poison and her laws a reward for every suffering.
The butterfly
devoured by a bird becomes that bird, and the little bird
killed by an animal
goes into a higher form. It is the blind law of necessity
and the eternal
fitness of things, and hence cannot be called evil in
Nature. The real evil
proceeds from human intelligence and its origin rests entirely
with reasoning
man who dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone
is the true source
of evil. Evil is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of
human selfishness and
greediness. Think profoundly and you will find that save
death-which is no evil
but a necessary law, and accidents which will always find
their reward in a
future life-the origin of every evil, whether small or
great, is in human
action, in man whose intelligence makes him the one free
agent in Nature. It is
not Nature that creates diseases, but man. . . . Food,
sexual relations, drink,
are all natural necessities of life; yet excess in them
brings on disease,
misery, suffering, mental and physical. . . . Become a
glutton, a debauchee, a
tyrant, and you become the originator of diseases, of human
suffering and
misery. Therefore it is neither Nature nor an imaginary
Deity that has to be
blamed, but human nature made vile by selfishness."17
It will be of interest to hear what K.H. says about
"heaven."
"It (Devachan)18 is an idealed paradise in each case,
of the
Ego's own making, and by him filled with the scenery,
crowded with the incidents
and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such
a sphere of
compassionate bliss."19
Man makes his own heaven or hell, and is in it while he is
making it. It is
subjective; only, Theosophy postulates a certain (refined
and sublimated)
objectivity to the forms of our subjectivity. Man does in
heaven only what he
does on earth-forms a conception and then hypostatizes or
reifies it. Only, in
the case of nirvanic states, the reification is
instantaneously externalized. On
earth it is a slower formation. The "Summerland"
of the Spiritualists is but the
objectification of the Ego's buoyant dreams, when freed from
the heavy
limitations of the earth body..94
"In Devachan the dreams of the objective life become
the realities of the
subjective."20
This means that the ideal creations, the highest aspirations
of man on earth,
become the substance of his actual consciousness in heaven.
They are the only
elements of his normal human mind that are pitched at a
vibration rate high
enough to impress the matter or stuff of his permanent body,
and hence they
alone cause a repercussion or response in his pure
subjective consciousness when
the lower bodies are lost. On this theory the day dreams and
the ideal longings
of the human soul become the most vital and substantial, and
abiding, activities
of his psychic life.
The only memories of the earth life that intrude into this
picture of heavenly
bliss are those connected with the feelings of love and
hate.
"Love and hatred are the only immortal feelings, the
only survivors from the
wreck of the Ye-damma or phenomenal world."21
All other feelings function at too low a rate to register on
the ethereal body
of the Devachanee, and are lost.
"Out of the resurrected past nothing remains but what
the Ego has felt
spiritually-that was evolved by and through, and lived over
by his spiritual
faculties-be it love or hatred."22
Suicides, says K.H., must undergo a peculiar discipline
following their
premature death. Since they have arbitrarily interrupted a
cycle of nature
before its normal completion, the operation of law requires
that they hang
suspended, so to speak, in a condition of near-earthly
existence until what
would have been their natural life-term has expired.
"The suicides who, foolishly hoping to escape life,
found themselves still
alive, have suffering enough in store for them from that
very life. Their
punishment is in the intensity of the latter."23
Their distress consists, it seems, in remaining within the
purview of their
earthly life without being able to express its impulses.
They are often tempted
to enjoy life again by proxy, i.e., through mediums or by
efforts at a sort of
vampiristic obsession. Victims of death by accident have a
happier fate. They
are more quickly released from earth's lure to partake of
the lethal existence
in the higher Devachan.
All those souls who do not slip down into the eighth
sphere-Avichi-through a
"pull" of the animal nature which proved too
strong for their spiritual fibre to
resist, go on to the Devachan-to Heaven. To the Theosophist
heaven is not "that
bourne from which no traveler e'er returns," nor is
access to it a matter of
even rare exception. Millions of persons in earth life have
had glimpses through
its portals, in sleep, trance, catalepsis, anaesthesia,
hypnosis, or in the
open-eyed mystic's vision. It is a realm of sweet surcease
from pain and sorrow,
of happiness without alloy. But it is far from being the
same place, or from
providing identically the same experience, for every soul.
Each one's heaven is
determined by the capacities for spiritual enjoyment
developed on earth. Only
the spiritual senses survive.
To enrich heaven one must have laid up spiritual treasure on
earth. Furthermore,
the life there is not without break. The released Ego does
not loll away an.95
eternal existence there, but after due rest returns to
earth. Nor is his
enjoyment of the Devachan the same in each sojourn there. He
bites deeper into
the bliss of heaven each time he takes his flight from body.
The constant
enrichment of his experience in the upper spheres provides a
never-ending
novelty.
To Mr. Sinnett's assertion that a mental condition of
happiness empty of
sensational, emotional, and lower mental (manasic) content
would be an
intolerable monotony K.H. replies by asking him if he felt
any sense of monotony
during that one moment in his life when he experienced the
utmost fulness of
conscious being. Devachan is like that, he assured the
complainant, only much
more so. As our climatic moments in this life seem by their
ineffable opulence
to swallow up the weary sense of the time-drag, so the
ecstatic consciousness of
the heaven state is purged of all sense of ennui or
successive movement. To put
it succinctly, there is no sense of time in which to grow
weary.
"No; there are no clocks, no timepieces in Devachan, .
. . though the whole
Cosmos is a gigantic chronometer in one sense . . . I may
also remind you in
this connection that time is something created entirely by
ourselves; that while
one short second of intense agony may appear, even on earth,
as an eternity to
one man, to another, more fortunate, hours, days and sometimes
whole years may
seem to flit like one brief moment. . . . But finite similes
are unfit to
express the abstract and the infinite; nor can the objective
ever mirror the
subjective. . . . To realize the bliss in Devachan, or the
woes in Avitchi, you
have to assimilate them-as we do. . . . Space and time may
be, as Kant has it,
not the product but the regulators of the sensations, but
only so far as our
sensations on earth are concerned, not those in Devachan. .
. Space and time
cease to act as 'the frame of our experience' 'over
there.'"24
The land of distinctions is transcended and the here and
there merge into the
everywhere, as the everywhere into the here and there, and
the now and then into
the now.
Koot Hoomi is sure that the materialistic attitudes of the
Occidental mind have
played havoc with the subtle spirituality embodied in
Eastern religions, in the
effort at translation and interpretation.
"Oh, ye Max Mόllers and Monier Williamses, what have ye
done with our
philosophy?"25
You can not take the higher spiritual degrees by mere study
of books. Progress
here has to do largely with the development of latent powers
and faculties, the
cultivation of which is attended with some dangers. In this
juncture it avails
the student far more to be able to call upon the personal
help of a kindly
guardian who is truly a Master of the hidden forces of life,
than to depend upon
his own efforts, however consecrated. Each grade in the
hierarchy of evolved
beings stands ready to tutor the members of the class below.
"The want of such a 'guide, philosopher and friend' can
never be supplied, try
as you may. All you can do is to prepare the intellect: the
impulse toward
'soul-culture must be furnished by the individual. Thrice
fortunate they who can
break through the vicious circle of modern influence and
come above the vapors!
. . . Unless regularly initiated and trained-concerning the
spiritual insight of
things and the supposed revelations made unto man in all
ages from Socrates down
to Swedenborg . . . no self-tutored seer or clairvoyant ever
saw or heard quite
correctly."26.96
The Master Morya has a word to say to Sinnett about
"the hankering of occult
students after phenomena" of a psychic nature. It is a
maya27 against which, he
says, they have always been warned. It grows with
gratification; the
Spiritualists, he says, are thaumaturgic addicts. It adds no
force to
metaphysical truth that his own and K.H.'s letters drop into
Sinnett's lap or
come under his pillow. If the philosophy is wrong a
"wonder" will not set it
right. Spiritual knowledge, made effective for growth, is
the desideratum.
Trance mediumship, he reiterates, is itself both undesirable
and unfruitful. No
mind should submit itself passively to another. "We do
not require a passive
mind, but on the contrary are seeking for those most
active." Nothing can give
the student insight save the unfolding of his own inner
powers.
Much of the Adept's writing to Sinnett has to do with the
conditions of
probation and "chelaship" in the master science of
soul-culture. He says there
are certain rigid laws the fulfilment of which is absolutely
essential to the
disciple's secure advancement. They have to do with
self-mastery, meditation,
purity of life, fixity of purpose. These laws, which at
first seem to the
neophyte to bar his path, will be seen, as he persists in
obedience to them, to
be the road to all he can ask. But no one can break them
without becoming their
victim. Too eager expectation on the part of the aspirant is
dangerous. It
disturbs the balance of forces.
"Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears so
much life away. The
passions, the affections, are not to be indulged in by him
who seeks to know;
for they wear out the earthly body with their own secret
power; and he who would
gain his aim must be cold."28
A hint as to the occult desirability of vegetarianism is
dropped in the
sentence:
"Never will the Spiritualists find reliable trustworthy
mediums and Seers (not
even to a degree) so long as the latter and their 'circle'
will saturate
themselves with animal blood and the millions of infusoria
of the fermented
fluids."29
Arcane knowledge has always been presented in forms such
that only the most
determined aspirants could grasp the meanings. K.H.
interjects that Sir Isaac
Newton understood the principles of occult philosophy but
"withheld his
knowledge very prudently for his own reputation." The
"scientific" attitude of
mind is declared to be unpropitious for the attainment of
clear insight into
truth, and the pretensions of modern scientists that they
comprehend "the limits
of the natural" receive some of the Master's irony.
"Oh, century of conceit and
mental obscuration!" he jeers.
"All is secret for them as yet in nature. Of man-they
know but the skeleton and
the form . . . their school science is a hotbed of doubts
and conjectures."30
Furthermore, "to give more knowledge to a man than he
is fitted to receive is a
dangerous experiment." In his ignorance or his passion
he may make a use of it
fatal both to himself and those about him. The Adepts, it
appears also, have
their own reasons for not wishing to impart knowledge more
rapidly than the
pupil can assimilate it. The misuse of knowledge by the pupil
always reacts upon
the initiator; the Teacher becomes responsible in a measure
for the results. The
Master would only hinder and complicate his own progress by
indiscreet
generosity to his chela..97
As one means of lightening this responsibility the chela is
required, when
accepted, to take a vow of secrecy covering every order he
may receive and the
specific information imparted. The Master knows whether the
vow is ever broken,
without a question being put.
The prime qualification for the favor of receiving the great
knowledge is
rectitude of motive. Wisdom must be sought only for its
serviceability to
Brotherhood and progress, not even as an end in itself:
"The quality of wisdom ever was and will be yet for a
long time-to the very
close of the fifth race-denied to him who seeks the wealth
of the mind for its
own sake, and for its own enjoyment and result, without the
secondary purpose of
turning it to account in the attainment of material
benefits."31
The applicant for chelaship is tested-unknown to himself-in
subtle ways before
he is accepted, and often afterwards, too. It is not a
system of secret
espionage, but a method of drawing out the inner nature of
the neophytes, so
that they may become self-conquerors.
K.H. reminds Sinnett that the efforts of theosophic
adherents to restore or
propagate esoteric doctrines have ever been met by the
determined opposition of
the vested ecclesiastical interests, which have not scrupled
to resort to
forgery of documents, alleged confessions of fraud, or other
villainous
subterfuge, to crush out the "heresy."
"Some of you Theosophists are now wounded only in your
'honor' or your purses,
but those who held the lamp in previous generations paid the
penalty of their
lives for their knowledge."32
He points out, too, the distressful state into which certain
over-eager
aspirants have brought themselves by "snatching at
forbidden power before their
moral nature is developed to the point of fitness for its
exercise." He says:
"it would be a sorry day for mankind" if any
sharper or deadlier powers-such as
those the high Adepts are privileged to wield-were put in
the hands of those
unaccustomed to use them, or morally untrustworthy.
K.H. volunteers to explain the occult significance of the
interlaced black and
white triangles in the circle which forms part of the
monogram on the seal of
the Theosophical Society. The Jewish Kabbalists viewed the
insignia as Solomon's
Seal. It is "a geometrical synthesis of the whole
occult doctrine."
"The two interlaced triangles . . . contain the
'squaring of the circle,' the
'philosophical stone,' the great problems of Life and Death,
and-the Mystery of
Evil."33
The upward-pointing triangle is Wisdom concealed, and the
downward-pointing one
is Wisdom revealed-in the phenomenal world.
"The circle indicates the bounding, circumscribing
quality of the All, the
Universal Principle which expands . . . to embrace all
things."
The three sides represent the three gunas, or finite
attributes. The double
triangles likewise symbolize the Great Passive and the Great
Active principles,
the male and female, Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti
(Matter).34 The one triangle
points upward to Spirit, the other downward to Matter, and
their interlacing
represents the conjunction of Spirit and Matter in the
manifested universe. The.98
six points of the two triangles, with the central point,
yield the significant
Seven, the symbol of Universal Being.
Manifestation of the Absolute Life creates universes, and
starts evolutionary
processes; but, says K.H. to Sinnett,
"neither you nor any other man across the threshold has
had or ever will have
the 'complete theory' of Evolution taught him; or get it
unless he guesses it
for himself. . . . Some-have come very near to it. But there
is always . . .
just enough error . . . to prove the eternal law that only
the unshackled Spirit
shall see the things of the Spirit without a veil."35
Pride of intellect grows enormously more dangerous the farther
one goes toward
the higher realms; and after that is overcome spiritual
pride raises its head.
An average mortal finds his share of sin and misery rather
equally distributed
over his life; but a chela has it concentrated all within
one period of
probation. One who essays the higher peaks of knowledge must
overcome a heavier
drag of moral gravitation than one who is content to walk
the plain.
From a purely political standpoint it is interesting to note
that in 1883 K.H.
had taken hold of a project to launch in India a journal to
be named "The
Phoenix," which, with Mr. Sinnett as editor, was to
function as an agent for the
cultivation of native Hindu patriotism, of which the Master
saw a sore need in
India's critical situation at that time. Native princes were
looked to for
financial support, as well as Theosophists, and propaganda
for the venture had
already been set in motion. But K.H. declares that his
closer inspection of the
situation and his discovery of the wretched political
indifference of his
countrymen made the enterprise dubious, financially and
spiritually. He then
ordered Sinnett to drop it entirely, as he saw certain
failure ahead.
The Mahatma Letters, in the latter portion, go deeply into
the affairs of the
London Lodge, T. S., which Mr. Sinnett had founded on his
return to England, and
they even advise as to the "slate" of officers to
stand for election. There was
a factional grouping in the Lodge at the time, the
Kingsford-Maitland party
standing for Christian esotericism as against the paramount
influence of the
Tibetan Masters, whose existence was regarded by them as at
least hypothetical;
and the Sinnett wing adhering closely to H.P.B. and her
Adepts. Mrs. Anna B.
Kingsford had had a series of communications in her own
right from high
teachers, which K.H. himself stated were in accord with his
own doctrine. These
were published in a volume, The Perfect Way. The Master
counsels harmony between
the two parties, preaching, with Heraclitus, that harmony is
the equilibrium
established by the tension of two opposing forces.
Much or most of the substance of the later Letters is
personal, touching
Sinnett's relations with persons of prominence in the
Theosophical movement. The
Adepts make no claim to omniscience-they themselves are in
turn disciples of
higher and grander beings whom they speak of as the Dhyan
Chohans,36 and whom
they rank next to the "planetaries"-but they
assert their ability to look from
any distance into the secret minds of Sinnett's associates
as well as into his
own. They gave him the benefit of this spiritual
"shadowing" to guide him in the
Society's affairs.
Many complimentary things are said to Mr. Sinnett for his
encouragement; but he
is not spared personal criticism of the sharpest sort. He is
told that his
attitude of Western pride stands in the way of his true
spiritual progress.
While his admirable qualities have won him the distinction
of being used as a.99
literary aid to the Mahatmas, still he is pronounced far
from eligible for
chelaship.
Much of the material in the Letters, being of a quite
personal and intimate
nature, was, to be sure, never intended for publication; in
fact, was again and
again forbidden publication. But the Sinnett estate was
persuaded, in 1925, to
give out the Letters for the good they might be expected to
do in refutation of
the many bizarre divergencies which Neo-Theosophy was making
from the original
teachings. Their publication came at the conclusion of the
half-century period
of the existence of the Theosophical Society and was supposed
to terminate an
old and begin a new cycle with some exceptional significance
such as
Theosophists attribute to times and tides in the flow of
things.
To most Theosophists the existence of the Masters and the
contents of their
teaching form the very corner-stone of their systematic
faith. And ultimately
they point to the wisdom and spirituality displayed in the
Letters themselves as
being sufficient vindication of that faith..100
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VII
STORM, WRECK, AND REBUILDING
Reverting from philosophy to history we must now give some
account of what
happened in India from the date the two Founders left
America late in 1878.
India welcomed Theosophy with considerable warmth. Col.
Olcott toured about,
founding Lodges rapidly, and Madame Blavatsky bent herself
to the more esoteric
work of corresponding with her Masters and of establishing
her official
mouthpiece, The Theosophist. Though Isis Unveiled had been
put forth in America,
Theosophy was first really propagated in India.
The early history of the Society in India need not concern
us here, save as it
had repercussions in the United States. But it is necessary
to touch upon the
conspicuous events that transpired there in 1884-85, for
they shook the
Theosophic movement to its foundations and for a time
threatened to end it. We
refer to the official Reports issued in those two years by
the Society for
Psychical Research in England upon the genuineness of the
Theosophic phenomena.1
The S.P.R., having been founded shortly before 1884 by
prominent men interested
in the growing reports of spiritistic and psychic phenomena
(the early
membership included at least three Theosophists, Prof. F. W.
H. Myers, Mr. W.
Stainton Moses and Mr. C. C. Massey), manifested a
pronounced interest in the
recently-published and widely-read works of Mr. Sinnett, The
Occult World and
Esoteric Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and the
works and
experiments of Prof. William Crookes had done much to foster
this new study.
Accordingly when Col. Olcott and Mohini M. Chatterji, a
devoted follower of
H.P.B., were in Europe in 1884, the S.P.R. requested the
three to sit for
friendly questioning concerning Madame Blavatsky's reported
marvels. She was
herself interrogated at this time. This procedure led to the
publication "for
private and confidential use" of the First Report of
the Committee in the fall
of 1884. In sum the Report expressed decided incredulity as
to the genuine
nature of the phenomena. Ascribing fraud only to Madame
Blavatsky, it says:
"Now the evidence in our opinion renders it impossible
to avoid one or other of
two alternative conclusions: Either that some of the
phenomena recorded are
genuine, or that other persons than Madame Blavatsky, of good
standing in
society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in
deliberate imposture."
The conclusion was:
"On the whole, however, (though with some serious
reserves) it seems undeniable
that there is a prima facie case for some part at least of
the claim made, which
. . . cannot, with consistency, be ignored."
Later in the same year the S.P.R. sent one of its members,
Mr. Richard Hodgson,
a young University graduate, to India to conduct further
investigation of the
phenomena reported to have taken place at the Headquarters
of the Theosophical
Society, at Madras. He was given untrammeled access to the
premises and.101
permitted to examine in person members of the household who
had witnessed some
of the events in question.
H.P.B.'s nemesis in these ill-started proceedings was one
Madame Coulomb. In
1871, when Madame Blavatsky had been brought to Cairo, along
with other
survivors of their wrecked vessel, the French woman, a
claimant to the
possession of mediumistic powers, became interested in
H.P.B.'s psychic
abilities and rendered her some assistance. When, in 1879,
the Founders arrived
in India, Madame Coulomb in her turn resorted to her Russian
friend for aid, and
H.P.B. made her the housekeeper, and her husband the general
utility man, of the
little Theosophic colony. They proved to be ungrateful,
meddlesome, and
unscrupulous, became jealous and discontented, and when left
in charge of Madame
Blavatsky's own rooms in the building during her absence on
the journey to
Europe in 1884, they fell into bickering and open conflict
with Mr. Lane-Fox,
Dr. Franz Hartmann and others of the personnel over
questions of authority and
small matters of household management. Both they and the
Theosophists took up
the matters of dispute by letter with H.P.B. and Col. Olcott
in Europe, and the
two leaders urged conciliation and peace on both sides. But
finally the ill-repressed
resentment of Madame Coulomb broke out into secret
machinations with
the Christian missionaries to expose Madame Blavatsky as a
fraud. Madame Coulomb
placed in the hands of the missionaries letters allegedly
written to her by her
former friend, in which evidence of the latter's connivance
with her French
protιgι to perpetrate deception in phenomena was revealed.
Just before exploding
this bombshell the Coulombs had become unendurable, and had
finally been
compelled to leave the premises.
Madame Coulomb bartered her incriminating material to the
missionaries for a
considerable sum of money, and the purchasers spread the
alleged exposure before
the public in their organ, the Christian College Magazine.2
Madame Blavatsky, in
Europe, made brief replies in the London Times and the Pall
Mall Gazette,
stating that the Coulomb letters were forgeries. She wished
to bring
recrimination proceedings against her accusers to vindicate
herself and the
Society. Friends dissuaded her, or deserted her, and nothing
was done. But the
Founders prepared to hasten back to India. Col. Olcott seems
to have taken a
vacillating course, and the resolution adopted at a
Convention held in India
upon their return expressed the opinion of the delegates
that Madame Blavatsky
should take no legal action.
She resigned her office as Corresponding Secretary, but
later was requested to
resume her old place.
Mr. Hodgson submitted his report, which was published near
the end of 1885.3 He
had not witnessed any phenomena nor examined any. He
questioned witnesses to
several of the wonders a full year after the latter had
taken place. He rendered
an entirely ex parte judgment in that he acted as judge,
accuser, and jury and
gave no hearing to the defense. He ignored a mass of
testimony of the witnesses
to the phenomena, and accepted the words of the Coulombs whose
conduct had
already put them under suspicion.4 The merits of the entire
case have been
carefully gone into by William Kingsland in his The Real H.
P. Blavatsky, and by
the anonymous authors of The Theosophical Movement. The
matter of most decisive
weight in Mr. Hodgson's unfavorable judgment was the secret
panel in H.P.B.'s
"shrine" or cabinet built in the wall of her room,
and a sliding door exhibited
by the Coulombs to the investigators, and described as
having been used by
Madame Blavatsky for the insertion of alleged Mahatma
letters from the next room
by one of the Coulomb accomplices. The Theosophists resident
at Headquarters
charged that the secret window had been built in, at the
instigation of the
missionaries, by M. Coulomb during H.P.B.'s absence. He
alone had the keys to.102
Madame's apartment, and one of the points of his quarrel
with the house members
was the possession of the keys. He refused to give them up,
alleging that Madame
Blavatsky had placed him in exclusive charge of her rooms
during her absence.
The charges of course threw doubt upon the existence of the
Masters, the
genuineness of their purported letters and the whole
Mahatmic foundation of
Theosophy.
A great point at issue was the comparison of H.P.B.'s
handwriting with that of
the Mahatma Letters. Two experts, Mr. F. G. Netherclift and
Mr. Sims, first
testified they were not identical, but later reversed their
testimony. Mr. F. W.
H. Myers confessed there was entire similarity between the
handwriting of the
Mahatma Letters and a letter received by Madame Blavatsky's
aunt, Madame Fadeef,
back in 1870 at Odessa, Russia, from the hand of a Hindu
personage who then
vanished from before her eyes. (Madame Blavatsky was at some
other quarter of
the globe at the time.) A distinguished German handwriting
expert later declared
there was no similarity between H.P.B.'s chirography and
those of the Master M.
and K.H.
It remained for Mr. Hodgson to assign an adequate motive for
Madame Blavatsky's
colossal career of deception, and here he confesses
difficulty. He finally
concludes that her motive was patriotism for her native
land: she was a Russian
spy! Mr. Solovyoff, in his A Modern Priestess of Isis, gives
some substance to
this charge. It is conceivable that Madame Blavatsky could
have felt sentimental
interest in the Russianizing, rather than the Anglicizing,
of India; yet it
appears preposterous to think that she would have endured
the privations and
hardships to which she was subjected in her devotion to
Theosophy merely to
cloak a subterranean machination for Russian dominance in
India. She was an
American citizen, having been naturalized before she left
the United States.
Mr. Hodgson declared Madame Blavatsky to be "one of the
most accomplished,
ingenious and interesting impostors in history." In a
letter to Sinnett, June
21, 1885, she records her reciprocal opinion of Mr. Hodgson.
She writes:
"They very nearly succeeded [in killing both her and
the Theosophical Society].
At any rate they have succeeded in fooling Hume and the
S.P.R. Poor Myers! and
still more, poor Hodgson! How terribly they will be laughed
at some day!"
The attack of the S.P.R. upon Theosophy and its leaders fell
with great force
upon the followers of the movement everywhere and only a few
remained loyal
through the storm.
Among the faithful in America was Mr. W. Q. Judge. It
remained for him to effect
a reorganization of the forces in the United States in 1885,
when the S.P.R.
attack was raging abroad. In the previous year he had gone
to France, had met
H.P.B., continued on to India and back to America. In 1885
he reorganized the
sparse membership into the Aryan Lodge. In 1886 he started
the publication of
The Path, long the American organ for his expression of
Theosophy. Active study
and propaganda followed quickly thereupon and the number of
branches soon
tripled. Col. Olcott had appointed an American Board of
Control. This body met
at Cincinnati in 1886 and organized "The American
Section of the Theosophical
Society." In April, 1887, the branches held their first
Convention, and adopted
constitution and by-laws. Mr. Judge became General
Secretary. The organization
was a copy of that of the Federal Government, though
allegiance was subscribed
to the General Council in India. In 1888 the second
Convention was held, with
Mr. Archibald Keightley present as a representative from
England. Theosophical
organization was at last in full swing in America..103
Brief mention may be made at this point of a somewhat divergent
movement within
the ranks of Theosophy itself about 1886. A Mr. W. T. Brown,
of Glasgow, had had
close fellowship with the Theosophists at Adyar, Madras,
from 1884 to 1886. He
then came to this country and associated himself with Mrs.
Josephine W. Cables,
who had been a Christian Spiritualist, but who had as early
as 1882 organized
the Rochester Theosophical Society. This was the first
Theosophical Lodge
established in America after the original founding in New
York in 1875. But Mrs.
Cables tried to represent Theosophy as a mixture of
Christianity, Spiritualism,
Mysticism, personal ideas on diet and occultism in general.
She founded The
Occult World, a magazine which Prof. Elliott Coues, then
President of the
American Board of Control, tried to make the official organ
of Theosophy in
America. But Mr. Judge's Path was in the field, and Mrs.
Cables and Mr. Brown
gave expression to some jealousy of the rival publication,
alleging that the
Theosophical Society was not a unique instrument for the
spreading of occult
knowledge, but that Christ was to be accepted as the final
guide and authority.
They referred to the Theosophic teaching as
"husks," while Christ had fed the
world the real kernel. To this H.P.B. replied through The
Path for December,
1886, and cast the blame for their losing touch with her
Masters on Mrs. Cables
and Mr. Brown themselves.5 Mrs. Cables turned her Rochester
Theosophical Society
into the "Rochester Brotherhood" and her magazine
into an exponent of Mystical
Spiritualism. Mr. Brown returned to the fold of orthodox
Christianity. Prof.
Coues was destined to contribute a sensational
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER to Theosophic history
before he broke with the movement forever.6
A close study of the record will reveal that it was during
these years that the
germ of a hierarchical division in the Theosophical
organization developed. In
the theory of the existence and evolutionary attainments of
the Masters
themselves was enfolded the conception of a graded approach
to their elevated
status. As the Theosophical Society came to be understood as
only an appanage of
the Masters in their service of humanity, its inner intent
was soon seen to be
that of affording a means of access to these high beings. It
was recognized as
an organization whose supreme headship was vested in the
Mahatmas and whose
corporate membership formed a lower degree of spiritual
discipleship. This
hierarchical grading naturally fell into three degrees,
predicated on the thesis
that the Adepts accept pupils for personal tutelage. There
were first, the
Masters, then their accepted pupils or chelas, and lastly
just plain
Theosophists or members of the Society. The third class
might or might not be
led to aspire to chelaship, on the terms of a serious pledge
to consecrate all
life's efforts to spiritual mastery. These three divisions
came to be called the
First, Second and Third Sections of the Theosophical
Society. It is the theory
advanced in the Theosophic Movement that H.P.B. represented
the First Section,
Mr. Judge the Second and Col. Olcott the Third. The Russian
noblewoman was
regarded as the only bona fide or authoritative link of
communication with the
First Section (though the Masters might at any time grant
the favor of their
special interest to others, as they did to Mr. Sinnett);
Judge was held to be an
accepted chela, in the high confidence of Madame Blavatsky
and her mentors,
their reliable agent to head the order of lay chelaship;
Col. Olcott was the
active and visible head of the Theosophical Society, the
accepted instrument of
the Masters in the work of building up that organization
which was to present
the ancient doctrine of their existence to the world and
mark out anew the path
of approach to them. H.P.B. and Judge worked behind the
scenes, while Olcott
stood in the gaze of the world. To them belonged the task of
bringing out the
teaching and keeping it properly related to its sources; to
him fell the
executive labor of providing ways and means to serve it to a
sceptical public.
The functions of the former two were esoteric; those of
Olcott exoteric. It was
understood that the Colonel was not advanced beyond the
position of a lay or.104
probationary chela. He himself seems to have accepted this
ranking as deserved,
and generously admitted that
"to transform a worldly man such as I was in 1874--a
man of clubs, drinking
parties, mistresses, a man absorbed in all sorts of worldly,
public, and private
undertakings and speculations-into that purest, wisest,
noblest, and most
spiritual of human beings-a 'Brother,' was a wonder
demanding next to miraculous
efficacy. . . . No one knows until he really tries it, how
awful a task it is to
subdue all his evil passions and animal instincts and develop
his higher
nature."7
The Theosophical Movement ascribes most of the trials and
tribulations of
Theosophy to the Colonel's indifferent success, at times, in
the "awful task."
Years later, Olcott says:
"She was the teacher, I the pupil; she the
misunderstood and insulted messenger
of the Great Ones, I the practical brain to plan, the right
hand to work out the
practical details."8
Out of this situation eventuated the formation of the
Esoteric Section of the
Theosophical Society. So many members were reaching out
after the chelaship that
Judge wrote to H.P.B. in 1887 for advice as to what to offer
them. She replied,
telling him to go ahead in America and she would soon do
something herself. She
then began the publication of Lucifer, in which the
qualifications, dangers,
obstacles, and status of chelaship were set forth in article
after article.
Judge went to London; and there, at the request of Madame
Blavatsky drew the
plans and wrote the rules for the guidance of the new body.
Col. Olcott looked
on with some perturbation while his spiritual superiors
stepped lightly over his
authority to inaugurate the higher enterprise. In October,
1888, the first
public statement relative to the Esoteric Section appeared.
It announced the
purpose of the formation of the Esoteric Section to be:
"To promote the esoteric interests of the Theosophical
Society by the deeper
study of esoteric philosophy."
All authority was vested in Madame Blavatsky and official
connection with the
Theosophical Society itself was disclaimed.
A further hint as to the impelling motive back of the new
branch of activity was
given by H.P.B. in the letter she addressed to the
Convention of the American
Section meeting in April, 1889. She says:
"Therefore it is that the ethics of Theosophy are even
more necessary to mankind
than the specific aspects of the psychic facts of nature and
man . . ."
She made a plea for solidarity in the fellowship of the
Theosophical Society, to
form a nucleus of true Brotherhood.
Unity had to be achieved to withstand exterior onslaught, as
well as interior
discord. An attack upon one must be equally met by all. The
first object of the
Society is Universal Brotherhood. She asked in the finale:
"How many of you have helped humanity to carry its
smallest burden, that you
should all regard yourselves as Theosophists? Oh, men of the
West, who would
play at being the Saviors of mankind before they can spare
the life of a
mosquito whose sting threatens them! Would ye be partakers
of Divine Wisdom or
true Theosophists? Then do as the gods when incarnated do.
Feel yourselves the.105
vehicles of the whole humanity, mankind as part of
yourselves, and act
accordingly . . ."
She then sent out a formal letter, marked strictly private
and confidential, to
all applicants for entry into the new school. It contained
an introductory
statement, the "Rules of the Esoteric Section
(Probationary) of the Theosophical
Society" and the "Pledge of Probationers in the
Esoteric Section." The latter
was as follows:
"I pledge myself to support, before the world, the
Theosophical Movement, its
leaders and its members; and in particular to obey, without
cavil or delay, the
orders of the Head of the Section, in all that concerns my
relation with the
Theosophical Movement."
It can be seen that such a pledge carried the possibility of
far-reaching
consequences and might be difficult to fulfil under certain
precarious
conditions. Much controversy in the Society from 1906
onwards hinges about this
pledge.
Madame Blavatsky went on to say:
"It is through an Esoteric Section alone . . . that the
great exoteric Society
may be redeemed and made to realize that in union and
harmony alone lie its
strength and power. The object of the Section, then, is to
help the future
growth of the Theosophical Society as a whole in the true
direction, by
promoting brotherly union at least among a choice
minority."
The Book of Rules provided that the work to be pursued was
not practical
occultism, but mutual help in the Theosophic life; it
outlined measures for
suppressing gossip, slander, cant, hypocrisy, and injustice;
for limiting the
claims of occult interests and psychic inclinations; it
inculcated the widest
charity, tolerance, and mutual helpfulness as the prime
condition of all true
progress. Said the Rule:
"The first test of true apprenticeship is devotion to
the interest of another."
It concludes:
"It is not the individual or determined purpose of
attaining oneself Nirvana,
which is, after all, only an exalted and glorious
selfishness, but the self-sacrificing
pursuit of the best means to lead our neighbor on the right
path . .
."
Conditions for membership in the Esoteric Section were
three: (1) one must be a
Fellow of the Theosophical Society; (2) the pledge must be
signed; (3) the
applicant must be approved by the Head of the Section. And
warning was issued
that, while no duties would be required in the Order that
would interfere with
one's family or professional obligations, "it is
certain that every member of
the Esoteric Section will have to give up more than one
personal habit . . . and
adopt some few ascetic rules." The habits referred to
were alcoholism and meat-eating,
mainly, and the ascetic rules were those regulating meditation,
sleep,
diet, kindly speech, altruistic thought, etc.
The establishment of the Esoteric Section was one of the
moves undertaken to
rebuild the structure of Theosophy which had been so badly
shattered by the
S.P.R. attack and its consequences. But while this was going
forward, largely
under the direction of Judge, Madame Blavatsky had already
begun to devote her.106
tireless energies to the accomplishment of another great
work of reconstruction.
Its inception bore a logical relation to the promulgation of
the Esoteric
branch. If students were to be taken deeper into the
essentials of the occult
life, there was need of a fuller statement of the scheme of
the world's racial
and cosmogonic history, so that the task of personal and
social development
might be seen and understood in its most intimate rapport
with the larger
streams of life. The arcane knowledge had to be further
unveiled.
The combined attack of the Coulombs, the Christian
missionaries and the English
Psychic Research Society on Madame Blavatsky in 1885 was
indeed a fiery-furnace
test. She had vigorously, in Isis and elsewhere, attacked
orthodoxy and
conservative interests in religion and science. She was now
to feel the full
force of the blow which society, through the representatives
of these vested
interests, was impelled to strike back at her, and it was
greater than she had
anticipated. It nearly ended her career. Not that she was
one to cringe and
wince under attack. Far from it. She wanted to bring suit
against her
calumniators. She burned under a sense of injustice. She
even contemplated the
possibility of startling a crowded court room with a display
of her suspected
phenomena. But-the trial would have necessitated dragging
her beloved Masters
into the mire of low human emotions, and this she could not
do. Instead, the
storm within her soul had to wear itself out by degrees. It
nearly cost her life
itself; but she was saved, as has been maintained, by the
intervention of her
Master's power. She wished to die, feeling that her life work
was irreparably
defeated. At this juncture she was summoned, as we gather
from her letters to
the Sinnetts, to a quiet nook north of Darjeeling, met the
Mahatmas in person,
and returned after a few days to her friends,
"fixed" once more. Whatever the
"inside" facts in the case, she went north broken
in body and spirit, and two
days later emerged from her retirement apparently well, and
with a new zest for
life, ready to battle again for her "Cause."
Not long thereafter came the journey from India, which she
was never to see
again, back to Europe, where she spent more peaceful days of
work among devoted
friends, the Gebhards at Wόrzburg, Germany, the Countess
Wachtmeister, the
Keightleys, and many more in Belgium, France, and England.
She said the secret
of her new lease on life at this time was that the Master
had indicated to her
that he wished her to perform one more service in the
interests of Theosophy
before she relinquished the body. Her task was not finished.
Isis was little
more than a clearing away of old rubbish and the
announcement that a great
secret science lay buried amid the ruins of ancient cities.
The Mahatma Letters
gave but a fragmentary outline of the great Teaching, enough
to stimulate
inquiry in the proper direction. But the magnum opus, the
fundamentals of the
Secret Doctrine, had not yet been produced. The "Secret
Doctrine" was still
secret. Restored to comparative health, and given certain
reassurances of
support from her Masters, her courage we renewed. One finds
the motive of
vindication running strong in her mind at this time; all
thought of defence, of
retaliation given up, she would disprove all the charges of
knavery, deception
and disingenuousness of every stripe by a master-work before
whose brilliance
all suggestion of petty human motives would vanish. She
writes in a letter to
Sinnett:
"As for [the charges of] philosophy and doctrine
invented, the Secret Doctrine
shall show. Now I am here alone, with the Countess
[Wachtmeister] for witness. I
have no books, no one to help me. And I tell you that the
Secret Doctrine will
be twenty times as learned, philosophical and better than
Isis, which will be
killed by it. Now there are hundreds of things which I am
permitted to say and
explain. I will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged
forger-plagiarist,
etc. The whole doctrine is shown to be the mother stone, the
foundation of all.107
the religions including Christianity, and on the strength of
exoteric published
Hindu books, with their symbols explained esoterically. The
extreme lucidity of
'Esoteric Buddhism' [Mr. Sinnett's book expounding the
summarized teaching of
the Mahatma Letters] will also be shown, and its doctrines
proven correct,
mathematically, geometrically, logically and scientifically.
Hodgson is very
clever, but he is not clever enough for truth, and it shall
triumph, after which
I can die peacefully."9
The work was intended in its first conception to be an
"expansion of Isis." It
was soon seen, however, that the fuller clarification of the
hints in the
earlier work would necessitate the practically complete
unveiling of the whole
occult knowledge. So Isis was forgotten, and the new
production made to stand on
its own feet.
The hint in her letter just quoted that she would do the
actual writing of the
new volumes practically without the aid of reference or
source books is to be
taken to mean, doubtless, that the very manner of her
production of the work
would constitute the final irrefutable proof of the
existence and powers of the
Mahatmas. The composition as well as the contents of the
book was to be
phenomenal. She says in a letter to Madame Jelihowsky, her
sister, written at
this time that "it is the phenomena of Isis all over
again." Yet there were some
variations. In a Sinnett letter she writes:
"There's a new development and scenery every morning. I
live two lives again!
Master finds that it is too difficult for me to be looking
consciously into the
astral light for my Secret Doctrine, and so, it is now about
a fortnight, I am
made to see all I have to as though in my dream. I see large
and long rolls of
paper on which things are written, and I recollect them.
Thus all the Patriarchs
from Adam to Noah were given me to see, parallel with the
Rishis; and in the
middle between them the meaning of these symbols or
personifications. I was
ordered to . . . make a rapid sketch of what was known
historically and in
literature, in classics and in profane and sacred
histories-during the five
hundred years that followed it; of magic, the existence of a
universal Secret
Doctrine known to the philosophers and Initiates of every
country, and even to
several of the Church Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria,
Origen and others,
who had been initiated themselves. Also to describe the
Mysteries and some
rites; and I can assure you that the most extraordinary
things are given out
now, the whole story of the Crucifixion, etc., being shown
to be based on a rite
as old as the world-the Crucifixion of the Lathe of the
Candidate-trials, going
down to Hell, etc., all Aryan . . . I have facts for twenty
volumes like Isis;
it is the language, the cleverness for compiling them, that
I lack."10
Writing to her niece, Madame Vera Johnston, she said:
"You are very green if you think that I actually know
and understand all the
things I write. How many times am I to repeat to you and
your mother that the
things I write are dictated to me; that sometimes I see
manuscripts, numbers and
words before my eyes of which I never knew anything?"11
In a letter to Judge in America, March 24, 1886, H.P.B.
says:
"Such facts, such facts, Judge, as Masters are giving
out, will rejoice your old
heart. . . . The thing is becoming enormous, a wealth of
facts."
Madame Johnston quotes Franz Hartmann, who accompanied
Madame Blavatsky on her
trip from Madras to Europe in April, 1885, when she was so
ill that she had to
be hoisted aboard, as saying that.108
"while on board the S.S. 'Tibre' and on the open sea,
she very frequently
received in some occult manner many pages of manuscript
referring to the Secret
Doctrine, the material of which she was collecting at the
time. Miss Mary Flynn
was with us, and knows more about it than I; because I did
not take much
interest in those matters, as the receiving of 'occult
correspondence' had
become almost an everyday occurrence with us."12
The person who had most continuous and prolonged opportunity
to witness whatever
display of extraordinary assistance was afforded the
compiler of The Secret
Doctrine was the Countess Constance Wachtmeister, already
mentioned as being the
companion and guardian of Madame Blavatsky during must of
the period of the
composition at Wόrzburg, Ostend, and in London. In her
Reminiscences of H. P.
Blavatsky, and The Secret Doctrine she writes in detail of
the many facts coming
under her observation which pointed to exterior help in the
work. She wrote:
"The Secret Doctrine will be indeed a great and grand
work. I have had the
privilege of watching its progress, of reading the
manuscripts, and witnessing
the occult way in which she derived her information."
The Countess states that on two or three occasions she saw
on H.P.B.'s desk in
the morning numbers of sheets of manuscript in the familiar
handwriting of the
Masters. She writes that at times a piece of paper was found
on the desk in the
morning with unfamiliar characters traced in red ink. It was
an outline of the
author's work for the day,--the "red and blue
spook-like messages." Questioned
how it was precipitated, H.P.B. stated that elementals were
used for the
purpose, but that they had nothing to do with the
intelligence of the message,
only with the mechanics of the feat.
More significant, perhaps, than these details is the
question of the origin of
the many quotations and references, as in Isis, from old
works, or from books
not in her possession. The testimony on this score is more
voluminous and
challenging than in the case of Isis. 13
Madame Blavatsky was practically without reference books and
was too ill to
leave the house to visit libraries. She worked from morning
until night at her
desk. Dr. Hόbbe-Schleiden, her German convert, says she had
scarcely half-a-dozen
books. Her niece writes:
"Later on when we three went to Ostend [in the very
midst of the work], it was I
who put aunt's things and books in order, so I can testify
that the first month
or two in Ostend she decidedly had no other books but a few
French novels,
bought at railway stations and read whilst traveling, and
several odd numbers of
some Russian newspapers and magazines. So there was
absolutely nothing where her
numerous quotations could have come from."14
Two young Englishmen, Dr. Bertram Keightley and his nephew
Archibald, worked
with Madame Blavatsky on the arrangement of her material. It
fell to them
eventually to edit the work for her. They contribute their
testimony as to what
took place of a phenomenal sort. Says Bertram:
"Of phenomena in connection with The Secret Doctrine I
have very little indeed
to say. Quotations, with full references, from books which
were never in the
house-quotations verified after hours of search, sometimes
at the British
Museum, for a rare book-of such I saw and verified not a
few."15.109
The nephew speaks to the same effect. As a matter of fact,
during the writing of
the latter portions of the book in London, Madame Blavatsky
kept two or three
young men, students from the University of Dublin, busily
engaged in the daily
search for quotations, which she said would be found in
books of which she gave
not only the titles, but the exact location of the passages.
These men have
repeatedly borne testimony to the facts in this connection.
They were Mr. E.
Douglass Fawcett, Mr. S. L. McGregor Mathers, Mr. Edgar
Saltus, and one or two
more.16
There were frequent and notable visitors in the evenings,
when the day's writing
was put aside. Mr. Archibald Keightley tells that:
"Mr. J. G. Romanes, a Fellow of the Royal Society,
comes in to discuss the
evolutionary theory set forth in her Secret Doctrine. Mr. W.
T. Stead, Editor of
the Pall Mall Gazette, who is a great admirer of The Secret
Doctrine, finds much
in it that seems to invite further elucidation. Lord
Crawford, Earl of Crawford
and Balcarres, another F.R.S.-who is deeply interested in
occultism and
cosmography, and who was a pupil of Lord Lytton and studied
with him in Egypt-comes
to speak of his special subject of concern. Mr. Sidney
Whitman, widely
known for his scathing criticism upon English cant, has
ideas to express and
thoughts to interchange upon the ethics of Theosophy; and so
they come."17
Untiringly through 1885, 1886 and 1887, in Germany with the
Gebhards, then in
Belgium and finally in London, she labored to get the
voluminous material in
form. Unable on account of her dropsical condition to take
exercise, she was
again and again threatened with complete breakdown by the
accumulation of toxins
in her system. A young physician of London, Dr. Bennett, who
attended her at
times, pronounced her condition most grave, on one occasion
declaring it
impossible for her to survive the night. In our third
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER we have seen
Countess Wachtmeister's account of her surprising recovery.
The Countess alleges
that Madame destroyed many pages of manuscript already
written, in obedience to
orders from the Master. There was left, however, enough
material for some
sixteen hundred close-printed pages which now make up the
two volumes commonly
accepted as her genuine product. To an examination of the
contents of this
pretentious work we now invite the reader..110
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VIII
THE SECRET DOCTRINE
The Secret Doctrine sets forth what purports to be the root
knowledge out of
which all religion, philosophy, and science have grown. The
sub-title-"The
Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy" reveals
the daring aim and scope
of the undertaking. It is an effort to present and align
certain fundamental
principles in such a way as to render possible a synthesis
of all knowledge.
The first volume deals with cosmogenesis, the second with
anthropogenesis. A
third, to deal with the lives of the great occultists down
the ages, was in form
for the press, as testified to by the Keightleys, who typed
the manuscript, and
by Alice L. Cleather and others, but never came to the
public. A fourth was
projected and almost entirely written, but likewise went to
oblivion instead of
to the printer. A third volume, issued five years after
H.P.B.'s death under the
editorship of Mrs. Annie Besant, is made up of some other
writings of Madame
Blavatsky, dealing in part with the Esoteric Section, but is
not regarded by
close students as having been the original third volume.
The whole book professes to be a commentary on The Stanzas
of Dzyan,1 which
H.P.B. alleged to be a fragment of Tibetan sacred writings
of two types, one
cosmological, the other ethical and devotional. The Secret
Doctrine elucidates
the former section of the Stanzas, and her later work, The
Voice of the Silence,
the latter. The Stanzas of Dzyan are of great antiquity, she
claimed, drawn from
the Mani Koumboum,2 or sacred script of the Dzungarians,3 in
the north of Tibet.
She is not sure of their origin, but says she was permitted
to memorize them
during her residence in the Forbidden Land. They show a
close parallel with the
Prajna Paramita Sutras of Hindu sacred lore.
There are of course charges that she invented the Stanzas
herself or plagiarized
them from some source. Max Mόller is reported to have said
that in this matter
she was either a remarkable forger or that she has made the
most valuable gift
to archeological research in the Orient. She says herself in
the Preface:
"These truths are in no sense put forward as a
revelation; nor does the author
claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made
public for the first
time in the world's history. For what is contained in this
work is to be found
scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the
scriptures of the great
Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and
symbol, and
hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is now
attempted is to gather
the oldest tenets together and to make of them one
harmonious and unbroken
whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her
predecessors, is that
she need not resort to personal speculation and theories.
For this work is a
partial statement of what she herself has been taught by
more advanced students,
supplemented in a few details only, by the results of her
own study and
observation."4.111
Near the end of her Introductory she printed in large type,
quoting Montaigne:
"I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and
have brought nothing of
my own but the string that ties them."
Then she adds:
"Pull the 'string' to pieces, if you will. As for the
nosegay of facts-you will
never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore
them and no more."
In the Introductory she presents once more the thesis of
esotericism as the
method used throughout former history for the preservation
and propagation of
the precious deposit of the Ancient Wisdom. She affirms that
under the sandswept
plains of Tibet, under many a desert of the Orient, cities
lie buried in whose
secret recesses are stored away the priceless books that the
despoiling hands of
the bigot would have tossed into the flames. Books which
held the key to
thousands of others yet extant, she alleges, unaccountably
disappeared from
view-but are not lost. There was a "primeval
revelation," granted to the fathers
of the human race, and it still exists. Furthermore, it will
reappear. But
unless one possesses the key, he will never unlock it, and
the profane world
will search for it in vain. The Golden Legend traces its
symbolic pattern
mysteriously through the warp and woof of the oldest
literatures, but only the
initiated will see it. A strange prophecy is dropped as she
passes on.
"The rejection of these teachings may be expected and
must be accepted
beforehand. No one styling himself a 'scholar,' in whatever
department of exact
science, will be permitted to regard these teachings
seriously. They will be
derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only in
this one. For in the
twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize
that the Secret
Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but on
the contrary, simply
outlined; and finally that its teachings antedate the
Vedas."5
Her book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a
select number of
fragments of its fundamental tenets. But it will be
centuries before much more
is given out. The keys to the Zodiacal Mysteries "must
be turned seven times
before the whole system is divulged." One turn of the
key was given in Isis.
Several turns more are given in The Secret Doctrine.
"The Secret Doctrine is not a treatise, or a series of
vague theories, but
contains all that can be given out to the world in this
century."6
She is to deal with the entire field of life, in all its
manifestations, cosmic,
universal, planetary, earthly, and human. Omnipresent
eternal life is assumed as
given, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its
regular manifestations.
It is always in being for Itself, yet for us it comes into
and goes out of
existence with periodical rhythm. Its one absolute
attribute, which is itself,
is eternal causeless motion, called the "Great
Breath." Life eternal exhales and
inhales, and this action produces the universes and
withdraws them. It is in
regular and harmonious succession either passive or active.
These conditions are
the "Days" and "Nights" of Brahm, when,
so to say, universal life is either
awake or asleep. This characteristic of the One Life stamps
everything
everywhere with the mark of an analogous process. No work of
Life is free from
this law. It is the immutable law of the All and of every
part of the All. It is
the universal law of Karma, and makes reincarnation the
method of life
expression everywhere. Life swings eternally back and forth
between periods of
activity and rest. Upon inaugurating an active period after
a "Night" of rest,
life begins to expand, and continues until it fills all
space with cosmical.112
creation; in turn, at the end of this activity, it contracts
and withdraws all
the energy within itself. The Secret Doctrine is an account
of the activities of
the One Life from the beginning of one of these periods of
reawakening to its
end, treating the cosmic processes generally, and the earth
and human processes
specifically. It is the cryptic story of how the universe is
created, whence it
emanates, what Powers fashion it, whither it goes and what
it means.
The period of universal rest is known in esoteric circles as
"Pralaya,"7 the
active period as a "Manvantara."8 A description of
the Totality of Things is
nothing but an account of the Life Force alternating,
shuttle-like, between
these two conditions.
The universe comes out of the Great Being and disappears
into it. Life repeats
in any form it takes the metaphor of this process. It
vacillates forever between
the opposite poles of Unity and Infinity, noumenon and
phenomenon, absoluteness
and relativity, homogeneity and heterogeneity, reality and
appearance, the
unconditional and the conditioned, the dimensionless and the
dimensioned, the
eternal and the temporal. What Life is when not manifest to
us is as
indescribable, as unthinkable as is space. The
Absolute-God-is just this Space.
Space is neither a "limitless void" nor a
"conditioned fulness," but both. It
appears void to finite minds, yet is the absolute container
of all that is.
Where the universe goes when it dissolves-and still remains
in being-is where
anything else goes when it dissolves,--into solution. Not in
a purely mechanical
sense, yet that too. It goes from infinite particularity
back into the one
genus, from form back to formlessness, from differentiation
back to homogeneity.
Matter goes to bits, finer, finer, till it is held in
solution in the infinite
sea of pure Non-Being. It goes from actuality to latency.
Occultism is the study of the worlds in their latent state;
material science is
the study of the same worlds in their actual or manifest
condition. Or, to use
Aristotelian terms, since no attributes can be predicated of
pure potentiality,
matter is privation. Matter is sheer possibility, with no
capacity but to be
acted upon, shaped, formed, impregnated. Nothing can be
affirmed of it save that
it is, and even then it is not as matter, but the pure
essence, germ, or root of
matter. It is just the Absolute, i.e., freed from all marks
of differentiation.
Since nothing can be asserted of it, it is pure negation,
non-being. Absolute
being, paradoxically, ultimately equals non-being. Being has
so far retreated
from actuality that it ends in sheer Be-ness. The eternal
"dance of life" is a
rhythmic movement of the All from Be-ness to Being, through
the path of
Becoming. This brings us to the famous three fundamentals of
the Secret
Doctrine, the three basic principles of the Sacred Science.
They are:
1. The Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable
Principle, on which all
speculation is impossible-beyond the range and reach of
thought-the One Absolute
Reality, Infinite Cause, the Unknowable, the Unmoved Mover
and Rootless Root of
all-pure Be-ness-Sat. It is symbolized in esotericism under
two aspects,
Absolute Space and Absolute Motion; the latter representing
unconditioned
Consciousness. The impersonal reality of the cosmos is the
pure noumenon of
thought. Parabrahm (Be-ness) is out of all relation to
conditioned existence. In
Sanskrit, parabrahman means "the Supreme Spirit of
Brahma." Whenever the life of
Parabrahm deploys into manifestation, it assumes a dual
aspect, giving rise to
the "pairs of opposites," or the polarities of the
conditioned universe. The One
Life splits into Spirit-Matter, Subject-Object. The contrast
and tension of
these two aspects are essential to hold the universes in
manifestation. Without
cosmic substance cosmic ideation would not manifest as
individual self-consciousness,
since only through matter can there be effected a focus of
this.113
undifferentiated intelligence to form a conscious being.
Similarly cosmic matter
apart from cosmic ideation, would remain an empty
abstraction.
Madame Blavatsky here introduces the conception of a force
whose function it is
to effect the linkage between spirit and matter. This is an
energy named Fohat
(supposedly a Tibetan term), which becomes at once the
solution of all mind-body
problems. It is the "bridge" by which the
"Ideas" existing in the Divine
Intelligence are impressed on cosmic substance as the
"Laws of Nature." It is
the Force which prescribes form to matter, and gives mode to
its activity. It is
the agent of the formative intelligences, the various sons
of the various
trinities, for casting the creations into forms of
"logical structure."
2. The periodical activity already noted, which makes Space
the "playground of
numberless universes incessantly manifesting and
disappearing," the rhythmic
pulse which causes "the appearance and disappearance of
worlds like a regular
tidal ebb and flow." This second fundamental affirms
that absolute law of
periodicity, of flux and reflux, which physical science has
noted and recorded
in all departments of nature, and which the old science
termed the Law of Karma.
It has been treated briefly above, and a later
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER will trace its operations
in nature more fully.
3. The identity and fundamental unity of all individual
Souls with the universal
Over-Soul, the microcosm with the macrocosm. The history of
the individual or
personalized Soul is thus of necessity a miniature or copy
of the larger life of
the universe, a pilgrimage through the worlds of matter and
sense, under the
cyclic karmic law,--"cycles of necessity" and
incarnation. In fact individual
self-consciousness is only acquirable by the Spirit, in its
separated though
still divine aspect-the Soul-by an independent conscious
existence that brings
it in contact with every elementary form of the phenomenal
world. This demands
of it a "descent into matter" to its lowest and
most inert forms, and a re-ascent
through every rising grade until immaterial conditions are
once more
attained. The road downward and upward is marked by seven
steps, grades or
planes of cosmic formation, on each of which man acquires a
nature and faculties
consonant with the type of structure of the atom there
encountered. On the
downward arc (or Involution, a process unknown to modern
science which deals
only with Evolution), Life undergoes at each step an
increased degree of
differentiation; and the naming of the various
potentialities emerging into
potencies, gives us the dualities, the trinities, the
tetractys, and the
numberless hierarchies of the ancient Greeks and Orientals.
The Gods, the
Mothers-Fathers-Sons, Spirits, Logoi, Elohim, Demiurges,
Jehovahs, Pitris,
Aeons, are but names of the Intelligent Forces that are
first emanated from the
impregnated womb of time. The first emanated principles are
sexless, but sex is
introduced (in symbolic form) as soon as the dual
polarization of Spirit-Matter
takes place. The whole story of the Cosmogenesis (Volume I)
is a recital of the
scheme according to which the primal unity of unmanifest
Being breaks up into
differentiation and multiformity and so fills space with
conscious evolving
beings.
Thus the three fundamentals express respectively the
Be-ness, the Becoming, and
the Being of the everlasting That, which is Life.
The First Stanza describes the state of the Absolute during
Pralaya, the "Night
of Brahm," when nothing is in existence, but everything
only is. Such a
description can obviously be only a grouping of symbolisms.
The only fit symbol
of the Absolute is darkness, "brooding over the face of
the deep" (Space). It is
the night of Life, and all Nature sleeps. The worlds were
not. The only
description is privative. Time was not; mind was not;
"the seven ways to bliss,".114
or the evolutionary paths, were not; the "causes of
misery," of the worlds of
illusion, were not; even the hierarchies who would direct
the "new wheel," were
not. The first differentiation of the That, viz., Spirit,
had not been made.
("That" is a reminiscence of the phrase tat tvam
asi "that [i.e., the All] thou
art," found in the Indian Upanishads.) Matter was not;
but only its formless
essence.
Nature had thus slept for "seven eternities,"
however they may have been
registered in a timeless consciousness; for time was not,
since there was no
differentiation, hence no succession. Mind was not, having
no organ to function
through. All was noumenon. The Great Breath, on whose
outgoing energy worlds
sprang into existence, had not yet gone forth. The universe
was a blank;
metaphysics had not begun to generate physics; the universe
held in solution had
not yet begun to precipitate into crystallization. All life
was hidden in the
formless embrace of the protyle, or primal substance.
Darkness is the "Father of
Lights," but the Son had not yet been born. When day
dawns, Father (Spirit) and
Mother (Substance) unite to beget their Son, who will then
cleave the Cimmerian
darkness and issue forth to flood all space.
Stanza II continues the description of the sleeping
universe, pointing, however,
to the signs of reawakening. "The hour had not yet
struck; the ray had not yet
flashed into the germ; the mother-lotus had not yet
swollen." From the darkness
soon would issue the streak of dawn, splitting open by its
light and warmth the
shell of each atom of virgin matter, and letting issue
thence the Seven
Creators, who will fashion the universe. In the Mundane Egg
the germ of life was
deposited from the preceding Manvantaras, and the Divine
Energy, brooding over
it for aeons, caused it to hatch out its brood of new
worlds. In immaterial form
within the germ dwelt the archetypal ideas, the (Platonic)
memories of former
experiences, which will determine the form of the new
structures as the Divine
Architects of the worlds. All things on earth are but
patterns of things in the
heavens; spiritual ideas crystallized into concretion on the
plane of
manifestation-"sermons in stones." The lotus is
the symbol of esoteric teaching
because its seed contains a miniature of the future plant,
and because, like
man, it lives in three worlds, the mud (material), the water
(typifying the
emotional), and the air (spiritual).
Creation starts with incubation. The Cosmic Egg must be
fertilized ere it can be
hatched. A ray, or first emanation, from the Darkness opens
the womb of the
Mother (Primal Substance), and it then emanates as three,
Father-Mother-Son,
which, with the energy of Fohat makes the quaternary. Thus
occultism explains
all the mysteries of the trinity and the Immaculate
Conception. The first dogma
of Occultism is universal unity under three aspects. The Son
was born from
virgin (i.e., unproductive, unfertilized) matter (Root
Substance, the Mother),
when the latter was fecundated by the Father (Spirit).
The archetypal ideas do not imply a Divine Ideator, nor the
Divine Thought a
Divine Thinker. The Universe is Thought itself, reflected in
a manifested
material. But the Universe is the product, or
"Son," which during the prologue
of the drama of the creation lies buried in the Divine
Thought. The latter has
"not yet penetrated unto the Divine Bosom."
Stanza III rings with the concluding vibrations of the
seventh eternity as they
thrill through boundless space, sounding the cock-crow of a
new Manvantaric
daybreak. The Mother (Substance) swells, expanding from
within. The vibration
sweeps along, impregnating the quiescent germs of life in
the whole expanse.
Darkness gives out light; light drops into virgin matter,
opening every bud.
Divine Intelligence impregnates chaos. The germs float
together into the World-.115
Egg, the ancient symbol of Nature fructified. The
aggravation of units of matter
under the impulse of dynamic spirit is symbolized by the
term "curdling." Pure
Spirit curdles pure matter into the incipient granules of
hyle, or substance.
The serpent symbol is prominent in the early cosmology,
typifying at different
times the eternity, infinitude, regeneration and
rejuvenation of the universe,
and also wisdom. The familiar serpent with its tail in its
mouth was a symbol
not only of eternity and infinitude, but of the globular
form of all bodies
shaped out of the fire mist. In general the "fiery
serpent" represented the
movement of Divine Wisdom over the face of the waters, or
primary elements.
The text of the whole doctrine of the early stages, in fact,
of the entire
creative process, is the statement "that there is but
One Universal Element,
infinite, unborn and undying, and that all the rest-as the
world of phenomena-are
but so many various differentiated aspects and
transformations of that One,
from Cosmical down to micro-cosmical effects, from
superhuman down to human and
sub-human beings, the totality in short of objective
existence."9
Naturally but one tiny segment of all that activity is
cognizable by man, whose
perceptive powers are limited to a small range of vibratory
sensitivity. Only
that part of nature which comes within hail of his sense
equipment, only the
expressions of life which take physical form, are known
(directly) to him. Were
it not, says Theosophy, for the fact that superhuman beings,
whose cognitive
powers have been vastly extended beyond ordinary human
capacity, have imparted
to those qualified to receive it information relative to the
upper worlds and
the inner realities of nature, we would know nothing of
cosmology.
"In order to obtain clear perception of it, one has
first of all to admit the
postulate of a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal
Deity in Nature;
secondly, to have fathomed the meaning of electricity in its
true essence; and
thirdly, to credit man with being a septenary symbol, on the
terrestrial plane,
of the One Great Unit, (the Logos), which is itself the
seven-vowelled sign, the
Breath, crystallized into the Word."10
Madame Blavatsky starts with the Absolute, the All-That-Is,
not even the One,
but the No-Number.
In Stanza IV we see this primordial essence awakening to
activity. It emanates
or engenders the One, the homogeneous substrate of all. It
in turn projects or
splits itself into the Two, Father-Mother, and these,
interacting, produce the
"Sons" or Rays, who by their word of power, the
"Army of the Voice" (the laws of
nature), build the worlds of the universe. These sons are
always seven in
number, and their created works are thus given a seven-fold
constitution.
Christians know them as the Seven Logoi, or the Seven
Archangels. These carry
the differentiation of the one cosmic substrate to its
furthest extent in the
production of the ninety-two or more elements of our globe,
which their forces
weld into an infinity of combinations to compose our
structural earth. All the
physical forces we know, light, heat, cold, fire, water,
gas, earth, ether, are
the progeny of the great universal agent, Fohat, which we
know under its form of
electricity. Electricity is the universal agent employed by
the Sons of God to
create and uphold our world.
In bold outline this is the whole story. But Madame
Blavatsky supplies a wealth
of detail and a richness of illustration that go far to
clarify the various
phases of the process and the diversified agents coφperating
in it..116
When the One has created the Two-Spirit and Matter-the
allegory goes on to say,
the interaction of these Two "spin a web whose upper
end is fastened to Spirit
and the lower one to Matter." This web is the universe,
ranging in constituent
elements from coarse matter up to vibrant Spirit. Yet Spirit
and Matter are but
two phases of one and the same Prime Element.
Cosmic Fire, Fohat, Divine Electricity, energizes the
universe. But to the
natural concept of electricity the occult science adds the
property of
intelligence. Cerebration is attended by electrical
phenomena, it is said.
Humanity is a materialized and as yet imperfect expression
of the seven
hierarchical Devas, or the seven conscious intelligent
powers in nature. The
planetary deities, or the planets as living beings, are
fundamental in the
Theosophic view, as to the Aristotelian and ancient Greek
view generally.
Mankind is but repeating the history of precedent life
units, which have risen
to celestial heights and magnitudes.
The forms of created life are all determined by the
geometrical forms in the
minds of the Intelligences. "Nature geometrizes
universally in all her
manifestations." There is an inherent law by which
nature coφrdinates or
correlates all her geometrical forms, and her compound
elements; and in it there
is no room for chance. The worlds are all subject to Rulers
or Regents, and the
apparent deviations from precise natural programs are due to
voluntary actions
on the part of those great Beings who, like ourselves, are
in the cycle of
experience and evolution. The Solar Logoi can err in their
spheres as we in
ours. Some of the exceptional oddities in nature are the
effects of their
efforts to experiment and learn.
The "Lipika" ("scribes")
"write" the eternal records of nature on the
imperishable scroll of the Akashic ether. They are the
"amanuenses of the
Eternal Ideation," who copy the archetypal ideas and
imprint them on the
material substance. They write the Book of Eternal Life and
exercise an
influence on the science of horoscopy.
Stanza V elaborates in more detail the creative process,
controlled by the
various "sevens," the "Breaths" (prana,
basic category in Indian philosophy) and
the "Sons." The Doctrine teaches that to become a
fully conscious divine "god,"
the spiritual primeval Intelligence must pass through the
human stage. And
"human" in this usage is not limited to the
humanity of our globe, but applies
also to the numberless other mortal incarnations of varying
types on other
planets. A human state is one in which Intelligence is
embodied in a condition
of material organization in which there is established an equilibrium
between
matter and spirit,--and this state is reached in the middle
point of the Fourth
Round on each chain of globes, or when spirit is most deeply
enmeshed in matter,
and is ready to begin its emergence. The hierarchical
entities must have won for
themselves the right of divinity through self-experience, as
we are doing. "The
'Breath' or first emanation becomes a stone, the stone a
plant, the plant an
animal, the animal a man, the man a spirit and the spirit a
god." All the great
planetary gods were once men, and we men shall in the future
take our places in
the skies as Lords of planets, Regents of galaxies and
wielders of fire-mist! As
our human wills (the divine elements in us) are now masters
over small
potencies, so our expanded Intelligences will direct vast
elemental energies,
and worlds will arise under the impulsion of our thought.
There is room in space
for us all. The "flaming fire" (electricity) shall
be our minister, to flash at
our bidding. The "fiery wind" is the incandescent
cosmic dust which follows the
impulsion of the will as iron filings follow a magnet. Yet
this cosmic dust is
"mind-stuff," has the potentiality of
self-consciousness in it, and is, like the.117
Monad of Leibnitz, a universe in itself and for itself.
"It is an atom and an
angel." Fohat is the universal fiery agent of Divine
Will, and the electricity
we know is one aspect, not by any means the highest, of it.
In a higher state
Fohat is the "objectivized thought of the gods,"
the Word made flesh. In another
aspect he is the Universal Life Force, solar energy. He is
said to take "three
and seven strides through the seven regions above and the
seven below," which is
taken to mean the successive waves of vital force
impregnating the seven levels
of nature. "God is a living Fire,"-the Christians
are fire-worshippers, too,
says Madame Blavatsky. God is the One Flame. It burns within
every material
thing. The ultimate essence of each constituent part of the
compounds of nature
is unitary, whether in the spiritual, the intellectual or
the physical world.
In order that the One may become the many, there must be a
principium
individuationis, and this is provided by the qualities of
matter. A spark of
Divine Fire, so to speak, is wrapped in a vesture of matter,
which circumscribes
the energies of spirit with a "Ring Pass-Not."
Each embodied Monad or Spiritual
Ego looks out through its sense windows to perceive another
Ego; but perceives
only the material garment of that Ego. The process of
evolution will make this
garment thinner, so that the inner splendor of the Self can
be seen luminously
through it.
The fiery energy of the great planetary beings, our author
says, will never "run
down," as it is constantly being fed by intra-cosmic
fuel, a theory which Prof.
Millikan has made familiar in recent days.
Stanza VI carries out the further stages of differentiation
of the life
principle in its first or virgin forms. Man's physical body
is but one of seven
constituents of his being, and a planet likewise presents
only its outer
garment, its physical vehicle, to our view. The stars, as
beings, are septenary,
having astral, mental, and spiritual bodies in addition to
their physical
globes. It is affirmed that this septiform constitution of
man, which makes him
an analogue of the great cosmic beings and of the cosmos
itself, is to be taken
as the true significance of the Biblical phrase "man,
the image and likeness of
God." The more real or more spiritual essences of the
being of both man and
stars are not visible to sense. The life impulsion animating
man contacts the
material world only in and through his physical body; the
same thing is true of
the chain of globes. Both man and the planet have one
physical body on the
material plane, two on the vital etheric plane, two on the
mental plane, and two
on the upper plane of spirit. The latter two are beyond the
powers of human ken,
and to us are material only in the sense that they are not
entirely devoid of
differentiation. They are still vestures of spirit, not
spirit itself. But they
are the first garments of "pure" spirit. A life
wave, in man or planet, comes
forth from spirit, enters one after the other the bodies of
increasing material
density, until it has descended to a perfect equilibrium between
matter and
spirit, in the gross physical or fourth body; and then
begins its ascent through
three other vehicles of increasingly tenuous organization.
And it runs seven
times round each cycle of bodies and dwells for milliards of
years in each of
the seven kingdoms of nature, the mineral, vegetable,
animal, and human, and
three sub-mineral kingdoms of an elementary character, not
known to science. The
waves of life pass successively from one globe to another,
lifting one into
active existence as another goes "dead." They
traverse the seven globes of a
chain like a great spiral serpent, revolving like a barber's
pole, every turn of
the axis carrying a kingdom of nature one stride higher. For
instance, hitting
Globe A of the chain the impulsion builds up the mineral
kingdom there; as this
first wave swings onward to Globe B (where it builds the
mineral kingdom for it)
the second impulsion hits Globe A and lifts the mineral
kingdom erected by the
previous wave into the vegetable evolution. As the first wave
leaps over from.118
Globe B to Globe C, to start mineral life there, the second
wave has brought the
vegetable kingdom to Globe B, and the animal kingdom on
Globe A. The fourth
outgoing of force will introduce the mineral world on Globe
D, the vegetable on
Globe C, the animal on Globe B, and the human on Globe A.
After the human come
the superhuman or spiritual evolutions. The detailed
explanation of the entire
cycle of birth, growth, life, and death of solar systems is
of such complexity
that it is the work of years for the Theosophic student to
grasp it with any
clearness. It is immensely involved, so that charts and
graphs are generally
resorted to. The student is referred to standard Theosophic
works for the
minutiae of this subject. We can but note here the
principles of the system and
some of their implications.
The earth, as the one visible representative of its six
invisible principles,
has to live through seven Rounds. The first three take it
through the process of
materialization; the fourth fully crystallizes it, hardens
it; the last three
take it gradually out of physical, back to ethereal and
finally spiritual form.
The Fourth Globe of each chain is thus always the nadir of
the process of
involution, and the Fourth Round is always the time in which
this process is
consummated. The earth is now a little past the nethermost
point of material
existence, as we have passed the middle of the Fourth Round.
We have finished
the descending arc and have begun our return to Deity, both
the globe and the
human family on it. Exiles from God, prodigal sons in a far
country, we have set
out on our homeward journey.
Man came on our globe at the beginning of the Fourth Round
in the present series
of life cycles and races, following the evolution of the
mineral, vegetable, and
animal kingdoms thereon. Every life cycle on our earth
brings into being seven
Root Races. The First Root Race were the progeny of
"celestial men," or the
Lunar Pitris,11 of which again there are seven hierarchies.
Human Egos continue to come into the stream of our evolution
on earth up to the
Fourth Round. But at this point the door into the human
kingdom closes. Those
Monads who have not reached the human kingdom by this time
will find themselves
so far behind that they will have to wait over, in a state
of suspended
vitality, until the next wave bears them onward. But for
their loss of
opportunity on this chain they will be rewarded by becoming
men on a higher
chain altogether.
The hosts of Monads are divided into three classes: Lunar
Pitris, present Men,
and the laggards. The first class are advanced Egos who
reached "Manhood" in the
First Round. The laggards are those who come in last, and
are still in an
undeveloped state.
The Moon is the parent of our Earth-and this in spite of the
fact that it is our
satellite. It is older, and its spirit has passed from its
now lifeless body
into our planet. In brief, the Earth is the new body or
reincarnation of the
Moon,--or more correctly, of that great Spirit which
tenanted the Moon aeons
ago. Madame Blavatsky uses the apt illustration of a mother
circling around her
child's cradle, to vindicate the anomaly of a parent body in
a satellitic
relation to its offspring.
There exists in nature a triple evolutionary scheme, or
three separate schemes
of evolution, which proceed contemporaneously in our system
and are inextricably
interblended at every point. These are the Monadic, the
intellectual, and the
physical. Here again analogy steps in to clarify thought. As
man is a Monad, or
spark of the Infinite Essence, which is evolving in
connection both with a
principle of mind and a physical body, so nature is a
combination of three.119
streams of development. The higher part must find its way to
growth through
connection with the lower and the lowest. But each of these
three evolutions has
its own laws, and the interconnection of them all in man
makes him the complex
being he is. Every speck of matter strives to reach its
model in man; and every
man aspires to be a self-conscious Monad.
Out of this assertion of a threefold nature in man grows one
of the unique
conceptions of Theosophy: that Man, a divine spiritual
Monad, is in this
evolution dwelling in and controlling (if he has learned how
to prevent it
controlling him) the body of an animal. And the body is the
animal's, not man's,
in the strict sense. The body has its own type of
consciousness, primal urgings,
its own independent soul, but no intellect or spiritual
nature. Through its
association with us in the same house it is supposed to
develop in a way it
could never do unaided, first a mind and later the inkling
of spirituality. But
every organism has its principle, and the soul of the animal
is capable of
attending to those functions which pertain to the life of
the body. Hence, the
commonplace functions of our bodies are regulated by a
cerebration which is so
far from being directly our own that we are at any rate
totally unconscious of
it. This amounts to saying that our subconscious, or the
operations of our
sympathetic, as distinguished from our cerebral, nervous
system, is the "soul"
of our animal mate. The hope of the animal lies in his
fairly ready
susceptibility to training, so that he is able quickly to
take up by an
automatism whatever "we" do habitually.
Theosophy affirms that man has to control, not his own lower
nature, but a lower
order of being whose body he is tenanting.
Theosophists point to the development of a child as
corroborative of this
theory. Before mind develops, the child is an animal simply.
Later comes
intellect, and after more time comes spirituality. Man is
not simple; he is a
congeries of individuals in association. As the individual's
unfoldment in his
own life is a recapitulation of the growth of humanity as a
unit, it follows the
same order of evolution. The great Creative Lords did not
implant the principle
of mind in our order until, in the Fourth Race, appropriate
bodies had been
built up. We are only now beginning to evolve spiritual
faculty.
The so-called Fall "was the fall of Spirit into
generation, not the fall of
mortal man." Madame Blavatsky undertakes to show that
on this point of theology,
as on that of the Virgin Birth, Christian doctrine is
childishly literal-minded.
It has taken a fact of cosmology, which like all others in
ancient thought had
been symbolized in various forms, and rendered it in a
literal historical sense.
The "Falls" are but phases of the universal
"descent into matter," which appears
under several aspects, one being the general outgoing of
spirit into the
material worlds, another the "fall of the angels"
and a third the "fall of man."
The taint of sexuality associated with certain conceptions
of man's fall is a
reference to the fact that when the spiritual Monads who
descended to earth to
inhabit the bodies of a lower race (the animals spoken of
above), they were of
necessity forced into sexual procreation, whereas they had
propagated by powers
of the intellectualized will in their previous high estate.
Then in regard to the Satans, the Serpents, the Dragons, the
Devils, the Demons,
the Demiurges, the Adversaries, Madame Blavatsky delves deep
into ancient lore
to prove that, when read properly in their esoteric meaning,
all the old legends
of the Evil Ones, the Powers of Darkness, refer to no
essentially evil beings,
great or small, but to the Divine Wisdom of the Sons of
Light (all light
emanates from darkness) who impregnate the universe with the
principle of
intelligence. Adam's eating of the fruit of the forbidden
tree gave him.120
knowledge of good and evil. This can mean only that beings
of a "pure" spiritual
nature represented symbolically by resident life in Eden or
Paradise, sought,
through incarnation in physical bodies in a material world,
the opportunity to
bring the latent intelligence in their divine nature to
actualization in self-conscious
knowledge. Dragons are always found guarding a tree-the tree
of
knowledge.
"When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses
the cosmic reflection of
God; it anathematizes God made manifest in matter or in the
objective; it
maledicts God, or the ever-incomprehensible Wisdom,
revealing itself as Light
and Shadow, good and evil in nature in the only manner
comprehensible to the
limited intellect of man."12
"Satan, once he ceases to be viewed in the
superstitious dogmatic
unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the
grandiose image of one
who made of terrestrial a divine Man; who gave him . . . the
law of the Spirit
and Life and made him free from the sin of ignorance, hence
of death."13
All references to Satan stood for an aspect of nature that
was evil only as the
negative pole of electricity is evil, i.e., as it stands in
opposition to the
positive, a necessary and benignant phase of activity.
"Deus est Demon
inversus."
The globes, or their constituent matter, go through seven
fundamental
transformations in their life history: (1), the homogeneous;
(2), the aλriform
and radiant (gaseous); (3), curd-like (nebulous); (4),
atomic, ethereal
(beginning of differentiation); (5), germinal, fiery; (6),
vapory (the future
Earth); (7), cold, depending on the sun for life.
When the worlds are populated and the Monads have entered
the human chain,
certain great beings who have risen to knowledge on other
chains supervise the
instruction of the oncoming races, keeping closely in touch
with the spiritual
condition of the unenlightened masses. Either they
themselves descend into the
world or they send forth lesser teachers to keep alive the
seed of spiritual
wisdom. Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, Krishna were a few
of their emissaries.
They voluntarily forego their own higher evolution, at least
temporarily, "to
form the nursery for future human adepts," during the
rest of our cycle.
Stanza VII goes into the numerology of the primal and later
hierarchies, and
gives the inner cosmological significance of the numbers.
Two, of course,
symbolizes the polarization of original essence into the
duality of Spirit-Matter.
Three refers to the triune constitution of the Divine Men,
or Planetary
Beings, who manifest the union of the three highest
principles, Atma-Buddhi-Manas,
14 in one organism. Man on his plane reflects this
trinitarian union. The
quaternaries represent the cardinal points which square the
circle of infinity
and typify manifestation. Four sometimes also stands for the
basic states of
elementary essence, or the four perceptible planes of
material existence, earth,
water, air, and ether. Five is the symbol of man in his
present stage of
evolutionary development, as he stands in the fifth lap of
his progression round
the spiral, and has consequently developed five of his
ultimate seven
capacities. This accounts for his having five senses, five
fingers and toes. The
pentacle or five-pointed star is often his symbol. The
six-pointed star refers
to the six forces or powers of nature, all synthesized by
the seventh or central
point in the star. Seven is, of course, the number of life
in its final form of
organization on the material plane. This is because the
Logoi created man in
their own septenary image. Man is really, in his totality, a
sevenfold being, or
a being made up of the union of seven distinct constituent
parts. His threefold.121
nature is a truth for his present status only. He is
sevenfold potentially,
threefold actually. This means that of his seven principles
only the lower three
have been brought from latency to activity, as he is engaged
in awakening to
full function his fourth or Buddhic principle. At the
far-off summit of his life
in the seventh Round he will have all his seven principles
in full flower, and
will be the divine man he was before-only now conscious of
his divinity. At the
end of each Round,
"when the seventh globe is reached the nature of
everything that is evolving
returns to the condition it was in at its starting
point--plus, every time, a
new and superior degree in the states of
consciousness."15
The theory of an inner permanent unit of life, repeatedly
touching the outer
material worlds in order to gain experience, is symbolized
in Theosophy by the
Sutratma ("thread-soul"), or string of pearls. The
permanent life principle is
the thread running through all, and the successive
generations in matter are the
beads strung along it.
To understand these postulations, we must envisage man as
dwelling only
partially in the physical embodiment, and having segments of
his constitution in
the invisible worlds. In the latter lies the ground-plan of
his earth life,
shaped by his previous life histories. The present physical
life will contribute
its quota of influence to modify that ground-plan when it
becomes in turn the
determinant of his succeeding incarnation.
The Sabbath, according to Madame Blavatsky, has an occult
significance undreamed
of by our theologians. It means the rest of Nirvana, and
refers to the seventh
or final Round of each emanation through the planes of
nature. But the Sabbath
should be as long as the days of activity.
A passage in a footnote says that the introductory
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTERs of Genesis were
never meant to represent even a remote allegory of the
creation of our earth.
They
"embrace a metaphysical conception of some indefinite
period in the eternity,
when successive attempts were being made by the law of
evolution at the
formation of universes. The idea is plainly stated in the
Zohar."16
Had its purpose been to give the true genesis, the narrative
would have followed
the outline laid down in The Secret Doctrine. The creation
in which Adam Kadmon
("Primal Man") has a part, did not take place on
our earth, but in the depths of
primordial matter.
The theory is adduced that each Round of the emanational
wave of life engenders
one of the four elements, of which the Greeks spoke so much.
The First Round
developed one element, "one-dimensional space,"
fiery energy. The Second Round
brought forth the second element, air. Matter in the Second
Round was two-dimensional.
The Third Round brought water, and the Fourth produced earth
in its
hard encrusted state. The Fifth will beget ether, the gross
body of the
immaterial Akasha.17 The senses of man in that distant day
will be refined to
the point at which responsiveness to ethereal vibrations
will be general. Our
range of cognition will be thus vastly enhanced, for whole
realms of nature's
life now closed to us because of our low pitch of faculty,
will then be opened
up. Phenomena manifesting the permeability of matter will be
to our higher
senses then a daily commonplace. We will have X-ray vision,
so that we shall be
able "to see into the heart of things.".122
If man's nature is sevenfold, so is his evolution. The seven
principles in him
are enumerated as "the Spiritual or Divine; the psychic
or semi-divine; the
intellectual; the passional; the instinctual or cognitional;
the semi-corporeal;
and the purely material or physical. All these evolve and
progress cyclically,
passing from one into another . . . one in their ultimate
essence, seven in
their aspects."
An important point is made by the expounder of Occultism as
to the way in which
we should think of all spirits in the supersensible and the
sub-sensible worlds.
Those superior to us have all been men, whether in this or
former evolutions on
other globes or in other Manvantaras; and those below us,
the elementaries,
nature spirits, will be men in the future. If a spirit has
intelligence he must
have got it in the human stage, where alone that principle
is developed. Spirits
are not to be regarded as exotic products of nature, beings
of a
17 "The fourth dimension of space" enters the
discussion at this point. The
phrase should be, says the writer, "the fourth
dimension of matter in space,"
since obviously space has no dimensions. The dimensions, or
characteristics of
matter are those determinations which the five senses of man
give to it. Matter
has extension, color, motion (molecular), taste, and smell;
and it is the
development of the next sense in man-normal
clairvoyance-that will give matter
its sixth characteristic, which she calls permeability.
Extension-which covers
all concepts of dimension in our world-is limited to three
directions. Only when
man's perceptive faculties unfold will there be a real
fourth dimension, a
foreign universe, creatures of a type unrelated to
ourselves. They are either
our lower or our higher brothers.
"The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march
toward a higher life.
There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest
forces. The whole
process of evolution with its endless adaptations, is a
proof of this."18
All nature is animated and controlled by lofty
Intelligences, who could not be
supposed to act with less of conscious design than
ourselves. Design is
exhibited everywhere in the universe, in proportion to the
degree of
intelligence evolved. There is no blind chance in the
cosmos, but only varying
grades of intelligence. The laws of nature are inviolable,
but individual beings
of every grade of intelligence move and act amid those laws,
learning gradually
to bring their actions into harmony with them. The deus
implicitus within each
of us-in every atom-must become the deus explicitus, and the
difficulties and
risks of the process are commensurate with its glorious
rewards.
Some of these Intelligences are veritable genii who preside
over our lives. They
are our good or evil demons. Hermes says
"they imprint their likeness on our souls, they are
present in our nerves, our
marrow, our veins and our very brain substance. At the moment
when each of us
receives life and being he is taken in charge by the genii
(Elementals) who
preside over births. . . . The genii have then the control
of mundane things and
our bodies serve them as instruments."19
Part II of Book One begins with an analysis of the evolution
of Symbolism. No
traditional folk lore, according to Madame Blavatsky, has
ever been pure
fiction; it represented a natural form of primitive
language. Ideography was a
stage of growth in the art of human communication. Symbolism
was no mere
intellectual device of idealistic algebra, but a natural
idiom of thought.
Mythology was a primitive pictographic mode of conveying
truths. An ideograph
could be understood "in any language.".123
A later development of this art brought the mystery
language, or particular set
of symbols to represent the esoteric truths. The cross, the
lamb, the bull, the
hawk, the serpent, the dragon, the sword, the circle, the
square, the triangle,
and many other signs were adopted for special significances.
There are seven
keys, however, to the mystery tongue, and some of them, as
well as the knowledge
of how to turn them, have been lost. Only in Tibet, it is
maintained, is the
code still intact. No religion was ever more than a
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER or two of the entire
volume of archaic mysteries. No system except Eastern
Occultism was ever in
possession of the full secret, with its seven keys.
There is a
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER on the Mundane Egg, which in all theologies is taken to
represent the prototype of life hidden in the lotus symbol.
Here we find a
special sacredness attributed to the letter M, as
symbolizing water, i.e.,
waves, or the great deep, the sea of prime substance. And
such sacred names as
Maitreya, Makara, Messiah, Metis, Mithras, Monad, Maya,
Mother, Minerva, Mary,
Miriam and others are said to carry the hidden significance
of the letter. The
Moon and its place in symbolism is the subject of a
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER. All the lunar
goddesses had a dual aspect, the one divine, the other
infernal. All were the
virgin mothers of an immaculately born Son,--the sun. Here,
as nearly everywhere
else, Christian dogmas and terms are traced to an origin in
pagan ideas. The
Satan myth is again taken up in a separate
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER, where it is said that the
only diabolical thing about it are its perversions under
Christian handling.
The Sevens are given more thorough elucidation in another
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER. There were
seven creations, or rather creation had seven stages. The
first was that of the
Divine Mind, Universal Soul, Infinite Intellect; the second
was the first
differentiation of indiscrete Substance; the third was the
stage of organic
evolution. These three steps were sub-mineral, and had yet
brought nothing
visible to being. The fourth brought the minerals; the fifth
brought animals, in
germ form; the sixth produced sub-human divinities, and the
seventh crowned the
work with man. Man is thus the end and apex of the
evolutionary effort. Man
completes all forms in himself. But esoterically there is a
primary creation and
a secondary creation, and each is sevenfold. The first
created Spirit, the
second Matter.
Madame Blavatsky traces the working of the septenates in
nature through many
forms not commonly thought of. Many normal and abnormal
processes have one or
more weeks (seven days) as their period, such as the
gestation of animals, the
duration of fevers, etc. "The eggs of the pigeon are
hatched in two weeks; those
of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of
the goose in five; and
those of the ostrich in seven." We are familiar with
the incidence of seven in
many aspects of physics, in color, in sound, the spectrum;
in chemistry, in the
law of atomic weights; in physiology; in nature. Madame
Blavatsky cites a long
list of the occurrence of the mystic number in the
ceremonials, cosmologies,
architecture, and theologies of all nations.
Scientific authorities are adduced by the author to
corroborate her contention
that the material universe is ordered on a system which has
seven as its
constitutional groundplan.
"The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions . . .
change, diseases, decay, and
death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals and even
of man, are more or
less controlled by a law of completion in weeks," or
seven day periods.20
From the seven colors of the rainbow to the seven-year
climacterics in man's
life and his allotted seven decades on earth, all the living
universe seems to.124
run in sevens and reflects the sevenfold nature of the
precosmic patterns of
things.
Volume II concerns the planetary history of our earth, the
inception of human
life on it, and the evolution of the latter through the
previous races up to
now. Humanity is assigned an age on the globe of infinitely
greater length than
the science of her day was willing to concede, which even
outstretches the
ampler figures set down by contemporary science.
We must start with the earth's place in the solar cosmos. As
will be recalled,
our planet is the one physically perceptible (to ordinary
human vision) globe of
a chain of seven (the six others being of rarefied
impalpable materials), this
chain being itself but one of seven, each of which has a
physical representative
revolving about our sun. These physical globes are subject
to the cyclic law
which brings to them successive waves of vivification and
sterility, and this
law operates as well with all the productions of life on the
globe as with the
globe itself.
The story of man then becomes that of a succession of great
world races
preceding the present one, with the various continents inhabited
by each, and
the form, the condition and the progress of mankind in each
manifestation.
Evolution is postulated as the working modus, but it is
evolution in cycles, not
in a straight line.
The very beginning of life on our planet occurred with the first
impact upon it
of the initial life wave in the First Round. But this first
wave brought life
only in the form and to the degree of mineral organizations.
When that life
impetus passed on to the next globe in the septenary chain
to integrate mineral
structure there, the second wave struck the earth and
carried evolution forward
from the mineral to the vegetable stage. The third crest
carried life on into
the animal kingdom; and the Fourth Round then became the
epoch of the entry of
man on the scene. The advent of man on the physical or
fourth globe of every
planetary chain is coincident with the Fourth Round, because
the middle of that
round is the central point-three and one-half-in a seven
series, and man's life
represents the perfect balance between spirit and matter.
This point would be
reached at the exact half-way mark, where the impulsion of
life energy would
have spent itself in the outward or downward direction (from
spirit to matter),
and the energies in play would begin to gather force for the
rebound or return
of spirit, bearing matter with it to "its home on
high." The middle of the
Fourth Round, therefore, would find a perfect balance
established between the
spiritual and the physical; and that point would be located
in the middle of the
fourth sub-race of the fourth root-race of human life on the
earth. As we are
now in the fifth sub-race (the Anglo-Saxon) of the fifth
root-race (the Aryan),
we are by some millions of years past the turning point of
our cosmical destiny.
On the reascending arc spirit slowly reasserts itself at the
expense of the
physical. At the close of the seventh Round at the end of
the Manvantara, the
Monad will find itself again free from matter, as it was in
the beginning, but
with the rich treasure of experience stowed safely away in
indestructible
consciousness, to become in turn the germ of growth in the
next Manvantara. On
the descending arc the pressure is centrifugal for spirit,
centripetal for
matter; the ascending path will see these conditions
reversed. Downward, the
spirit was being nailed on the cross of matter and buried;
upward, it is the
gradual resurrection of spirit and the transfiguration of
matter. Our fifth race
is struggling to liberate itself from the inhibitions of
matter; the sixth will
take us far from flesh and material inertia. The cycle of
spirituality will
begin, when all humans are Adepts.21 Henceforward spirit
will emerge victorious.125
as it has the whole weight of cosmic "gravity" on
its side. This is the cosmic
meaning of Easter.
The account in Genesis of the appearance of man is not far
awry, but must be
read esoterically, and in several different senses. It is in
no sense the record
of the Primary Creation, which brought the heavenly
hierarchies into purely
noumenal existence; it is that of the Secondary Creation, in
which the Divine
Builders bring cosmical systems into material form. The
accounts given in the
Puranas and the older literature are of pre-cosmic creation;
the one given in
Genesis is only of the cosmic or phenomenal creation. The
former deal with a
spiritual genesis, the latter only with a material genesis.
Man was the first of mammalian creatures to arrive in the
Fourth Round. He came
in the first race of the Round, several hundred million
years ago. But he was
not then the kind of being he is now. He was not then
compounded of three
elements, body, mind, and spirit. His body was being
organized by the slow
accretion of material around a purely ethereal or astral
matrix or shell,
provided for the purpose by the Lunar Pitris, in successive
sojourns in the
mineral, vegetable, and animal realms, during the three
preceding Rounds. These
Lunar progenitors started his mundane existence by
furnishing first the
nucleating shell and the earthly house made ready for
occupancy finally by the
living Monad, the indestructible spark of the Eternal Fire.
The latter is the
true being, Man himself. But at this early time he was,
comparatively speaking,
in the condition of formless spiritual essence. He had not
yet come to live in a
physical body, but was hovering over the scene, awaiting the
preparation of that
body by the forces guiding material evolution. He was
temporarily clothed in
ethereal forms, which became more densely material as he
descended toward the
plane of embodiment. He, a Divine Spirit, descended to meet
the material form,
which rose to become his fit vehicle. The two can not be
conjoined, however,--
the gap between crass materiality and sheer spirit being too
great-without the
intermediating offices of a principle that can stand between
them and eventually
unify them. This principle is Manas or Mind. As Fohat in the
cosmos links spirit
with matter, so Manas in the microcosmic man brings a Divine
Monad into relation
with a physical form. The complete conjunction of all three
of these principles
in one organism was not effected by nature until the middle
of the Third Root-Race.
Then only can the life of man properly be said to have
begun. That date
was eighteen million years ago. Men then first became
"gods," responsible for
good and evil, divine beings struggling with the conditions
of terrestrial life,
undergoing further tutelage in the school of experience
under the teachers,
Nature and Evolution. They were the Kumaras, "princes,"
"virgin youths"-beings
dwelling on the planes of spiritual passivity, who yet
yearned for the taste of
concrete life, and whose further evolution made necessary
their descent into
material condition on earth. They were the rebels (against
inane quiescence),
spirits longing for activity, the angels who
"fell" down to earth (not to hell),
but only to rise with man to a state higher than their
former angelhood. They
stepped down into their earthly encasement in the Fourth
Round. Their
prospective physical bodies were not ready till then.
Humanity had run the course of two races before having
developed a physical body
comparable to the ones we are familiar with. What and where
were these two
races? The first is given no specific name, but it inhabited
the "Imperishable
Sacred Land," about which there is little information.
It was a continent that
lay in a quarter of the globe where the climate was suited
to the forms of life
then prevalent. At the end of its long history it was sunk
by great cataclysms
beneath the ocean. Men in this race were boneless, their
bodies plastic; in fact
"organisms without organs.".126
In due time the second great continent appeared, to be the
home of the Second
Race, the Hyperboreans. This, we are told, lay around the
present region of the
North Pole. But the climate then was equable and even
tropical, owing to the
position of the earth's axis, which was then at a quite
decided angle of
divergence from the present inclination. The author claims
that the axis had
twice shifted radically; that Greenland once had a torrid
climate and luxuriant
vegetation. Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla are mentioned as
remnants of the
Hyperborean Land.
The Third Race was the Lemurian, and it occupied a vast
continent extending
south from the Gobi Desert and filling the area of the
Indian Ocean, west to
Madagascar and east to New Zealand. Madame Blavatsky gives
its boundaries with
considerable explicitness. Australia is one of its remnants
and the much-discussed
Easter Island another. Some of the Australian aborigines,
some races
in China, and some islanders, are lingering descendants of
the Lemurians. It was
destroyed mainly by fire, and eventually submerged.
As it sank its successor arose in the Atlantic Ocean and
became the seat of
Fourth Race civilization. This is the fabled Atlantis, to
which Plato and the
ancient writers have alluded, the existence of which Madame
Blavatsky says was a
general tradition among the early nations.22 The Azores,
Cape Verde, Canary
Islands and Teneriffe are the highest peaks of the alleged
Atlantean Land. The
Fourth Race flourished there some 850,000 years ago, though
the last portion,
the island of Poseidonis, north of the Sahara region,
carried the surviving
remnant of the race to a watery doom only eleven thousand
years ago. This final
cataclysm became the basis of the world-wide deluge myth.
The later Lemurians
and the Atlanteans were men like the present humanity, fully
compounded of mind,
body, and spirit or soul. They had reached in some lines
(the mechanical and the
psycho-spiritual) a development far higher than our own,
wielding psychic forces
with which we are not generally familiar and having, beside
airships, a more
ready method of tapping electric and super-electric forces.
In the early
centuries of the race's history its members were gigantic in
stature, and Madame
Blavatsky uses this assertion to explain the historical
riddle of the erection
of the Druidical temples, the pyramids, and other colossal
forms of their
architecture.23
It must be understood that the races overlapped in temporal
history, the former
ones being progenitors of their successors. Nature never
makes sudden leaps over
unbridged gaps. Her progressions are gradual. Many
circum-Mediterranean nations
were descendants of the Atlanteans, and a few degenerate
Lemurian stocks yet
linger on. Nor were their several continents annihilated at
one stroke. Portions
of the old lands remained long after the new ones had risen
from the waters.
This permitted migrations and the continuity of propagation.
The races were in
no sense special creations, but attained distinct
differentiations through the
modifying influences of time and environment. The Atlanteans
permitted their
ego-centric development to outstrip their spiritual progress,
fell into
dangerous practices of sorcery and magic, and through the
operation of karmic
law their civilization had to be blotted out, so that a more
normal evolution of
the Egos involved could be initiated under new conditions in
succeeding races.
The Fifth Race, our present Aryan stock, took its rise in
northern Asia, spread
south and west, and ran the course that is known to history.
The Anglo-Saxon is
the fifth sub-race of the seven that will complete the life
of this Root-Race.
The beginnings of the sixth sub-race are taking form in
America, we are told.
Mentality is the special characteristic of human development
which our fifth
sub-race is emphasizing. Each race, so to say, sounds in its
life one note in a
scale of seven..127
This in outline is the story of the five races and their
continental homes. Two
other great races are yet to appear, before the cosmic life
impulses complete
their expenditure of energy in this Fourth Round. At the
termination of that
period the present humanity will have reached the end of its
allotted cycle of
evolution and the life impulse will withdraw from our globe.
The latter will
lose its living denizens and its own life and will be left
in a condition of
deadness or pralaya, to await the return of the wave on its
fifth swing round
the chain of spheres.
Back in the first race the "propagation of the
species" was, strictly speaking,
creation, not generation. The phrase, "fall into
generation," applicable to the
Asuras (demons) or Kumaras who descended into earthly bodies
for physical
experience, has been wrongly linked with "the fall of
the angels." It was the
procedure which ensued at that stage of evolution, occurring
in the middle of
the Third Race period, when spiritual methods of propagation
were superseded by
sexual ones. Until then the attraction of the sexes was not
the incentive, or
the condition precedent, to breeding, for there were no
sexes. Man was male-female,
hermaphroditic. Before that he was asexual, and earlier
still he was
sexless. Coition was by no means the only method employed by
nature to carry
life forward. There were several other methods prior to
this, and there will be
others succeeding it in the long course of growth. To the
men of the First Race
sex union was impossible since they did not possess physical
bodies. Their
bodies were astral shells. They were wraiths, umbrae, only
ethereal counterparts
of dense bodies. In matter of such tenuity, subject largely
to the forces of
will, procreation amounted to a renewal of old tissue rather
than the upbuilding
of a new body exterior to the old. Reproduction was thus a
re-creation, a
constant or periodical rejuvenation. The Stanzas state that
the humanity of that
First Race never died. Its members simply renewed their
life, revivified their
organisms, from age to age. The serpent was used as a sacred
symbol for many
reasons, and one of them is that it periodically casts off
an old exterior
garment and emerges a new creature from within. This process
is somewhat
analogous to what took place with the First Race men. Each
individual at stated
periods, by the exercise of some potency of the creative
will described as
abstract meditation, extruded from his form a new version of
itself. Such bodies
could not be affected by climate or temperature. The First
Race men were known
as the Mind-Born.
Among the Second Race, the Hyperboreans, reproduction was
still spiritual, but
of a form designated asexual. The early part of the race
were the "fathers of
the Sweat-Born," the latter part were the Sweat-Born
themselves. These terms,
taken from Sanskrit literature, will have no meaning for the
materialist. Yet
she declares that analogues are not wanting in nature. The
process comes closest
to what is known in biology as "budding". The
astral form clothing the spiritual
Monad, at the season of reproduction,
"extrudes a miniature of itself from the surrounding
aura. This germ grows and
feeds on the aura till it becomes fully developed, when it
gradually separates
from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of aura;
just as we see living
cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent
division into two."24
The process of reproduction had seven stages in each race,
and this was one of
them. Each covered aeons of time.
The later Second and early Third Race men were oviparous and
hermaphroditic. Man
in this race became androgyne. But there were two stages of
androgynous
development. In the first stage, in the late Second and
early Third Races,.128
reproduction took place by a modification of the budding
process. The first
exudations of spores had separated from the parent and then
grown to the size of
the latter, becoming a reproduction of the old. Later the
ejected spores
developed to such a form that instead of being but miniature
copies of the
parents, they became an embryo or egg of the latter. This
egg was formed within
the organism, later extruded, and after a period it burst
its shell, releasing
the young offspring. But it was not fully androgyne, for the
reason that it
required no fertilization by a specialized male aspect or
organ of the parent.
It was a process midway between the Self-Born and the
Sex-Born.
Later on this process had become so modified by gradual
evolution that the
embryonic egg produced by one portion of the parent organism
remained inert and
unproductive until fructified by the positively polarized
elements segregated in
another portion of the procreator's body. Thus was developed
the method of
fertilization of the ovum by the male organs, when both were
contained within
the same organism.
It seems that the Third Race was marked by three distinct
divisions, consisting
of three orders of men differently procreated. "The
first two were produced by
an oviparous method presumably unknown to modern Natural
History." The infants
of the two earlier forms were entirely sexless,
"shapeless even for all one
knows, but those of the later races were born
androgynous."
"It is in the Third Race that the separation of the
sexes occurred. From being
previously asexual, Humanity became distinctly
hermaphroditic or bisexual; and
finally the man-bearing eggs began to give birth, . . .
first to beings in which
one sex predominated over the other, and finally to distinct
men and women.
Enos, the son of Seth, represents the first true
men-and-women humanity. Adam
represents the pure spiritual or androgyne races, who then
separating into man
and woman, becomes Jah-Heva in one form or race, and Cain
and Abel (male and
female) in its other form, the double-sexed Jehovah. Seth
represents the later
Third Race."25
Thus man, at one time more spiritual than physical, started
by creating through
the inner powers of his mind, and again in the distant
future he will be
destined to create by spiritual will,--Kriyasakti.26
Creation, we are told, "is
but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter."
There are yet many
mysteries in sex which humanity will bring to light as it
unfolds its knowledge
of the spiritual control of nature.
Madame Blavatsky weaves into her story the Promethean myth,
the war of the
Titans against Zeus being interpreted to mean the rebellion
of the Asuras and
Kumaras against the inertia and passivity of an unfruitful
spiritual state, and
their consequent drive for physical incarnation. This myth
was the Greek version
of "the war in heaven" and the succeeding
"fall of the angels." The author
ridicules the idea that mankind lacked fire in its common
form before Prometheus
brought it from heaven. The "fire" he brought as a
divine gift was "the opening
of man's spiritual perceptions." In the Greek allegory
Zeus represents the hosts
of the primal progenitors, the Pitris, or
"Fathers" who created man senseless
and without mind, who provided the first element of his
nature, the chhaya or
astral shell about which as a nucleus his material form was
to be aggregated,
this combination later to receive the gift of mind and later
still that of
divine monadic individuality or spirit. These Pitris
represented the lower host,
who were masters of all the purely blind cosmic and
"titanic forces"; Prometheus
typified the higher host, or the devas possessing the higher
intellectual and
spiritual fire. Prometheus, then, added to mindless man his
endowment of
intellect and spiritual wisdom. But once united with the
lower being to render.129
it the service of raising it to eventual Godhead, the divine
Titan fell under
the partial dominance of the fleshly nature, and suffered
the humiliation of
having to procreate by sexual union. This procreation was
not unnatural, not
immoral, not a sin and shame intrinsically; but it was a
comparative degradation
for beings who formerly created by free spiritual will. The
vulture torture of
the legend is only the constant preying of the carnal nature
upon the higher
man.
"This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the
Olympian tyrant, sensual
Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind; the
lower passions chain
the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in
many cases the
vulture of sorrow, pain and repentance.
"The divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal
man by selfishness and
egoism in every instance."27
The gift of Prometheus thus became "the chief cause, if
not the sole origin of
evil," since it joined in an unstable equilibrium in
one organism the free will
and spiritual purity of the angel hosts with the heavy
surgings of the bestial
nature; linked divine aspiration with sensual appetence.
Theosophists view this
situation as the ground of man's whole moral struggle.
The Promethean gift, the sacrifice of the devas for the
apotheosis of humanity,
was received 18,000,000 years ago.
It is significant that it came at the epoch of the
separation of the sexes. This
fact would appear to indicate that the independent privilege
of procreation,
involving the free action of two organisms, could not well
be vouchsafed to man
until he was possessed of the power of discriminative
wisdom. This middle period
of the Third Race thus marks the definite beginning of human
life on the globe,
as the principle of manas (Sanskrit man, to think) was
essential to constitute
the complete thinking entity.
These Titans or Kumaras were themselves of seven grades of
development, and as
they took birth in different racial and national groups,
their varying natures
at once gave differentiation to the human divisions. Madame
Blavatsky uses this
situation to explain the origin of racial differences.
It will be noted that Madame Blavatsky's account of human
racial progression
explains how the first life came onto the earth. Her
postulations enable her to
declare that life came hither not from the outside, from
another planet, but
emerged from the inner or ethereal vestures of its physical
embodiment. Life
does not come from a place, but from a state or condition.
Life and its
materials are everywhere; but the two need to pass from a
static to an active
relation to each other, and wherever certain processes of
interaction between
the two take place, there living things appear. They emerge
from behind the veil
of invisibility. Their localization on earth or elsewhere is
simply a matter of
some fundamental principle of differentiation. A great
cosmical process
analogous to a change of temperature will bring a cloud
before our eyes where
none was before. Life, says Madame Blavatsky, comes here in
ethereal forms, from
ethereal realms, and takes on physical semblance after it is
here. All life
evolved by concretion out of the fire-mist. The pathway of
life is not from the
Moon, Mars, Venus, or Mercury to the Earth, but from the
metaphysical to the
physical.
Esoteric ethnology extends the periodic law to world
geography in keeping with
the moral evolution of the races..130
"Our globe is subject to seven periodical entire
changes which go pari passu
with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that during
this Round there
must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the
change in the
inclination of the earth's axis. It is a law which acts at
its appropriate time
and not at all blindly, as science may think, but in strict
accordance and
harmony with karmic law. In occultism this inexorable law is
referred to as "the
Great Adjuster."28
There have already been four such axial disturbances; when
the old continents-save
the first one-were sucked in the oceans. The face of the
globe was
completely changed each time; the survival of the fittest
races and nations was
secured through timely help; and the unfit ones-the
failures-were disposed of by
being swept off the earth.
"If the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition,
he will find how the
weal and woe of nations is intimately connected with the
beginning and close of
this sidereal cycle of 25,868 years."29
In each case the continent destroyed met its fate in
consequence of racial
degeneration or degradation. This was notably the lot of
Atlantis, the Fourth
Race home. As Lemuria succumbed to fire and Atlantis to
water, the Aryan Race
may expect that fiery agencies (doubtless subterranean
convulsions of the
earth's crust) will prove its undoing..131
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER IX.
EVOLUTION, REBIRTH, AND KARMA
The spiral sweep of Madame Blavatsky's grandiose cosmology
carries with it an
elaborate rationale of human life. Life is a continuum, says
Theosophy, and
reincarnation is its evolutionary method, Karma its
determinant.
Theosophists feel that in fostering the renaissance in
modern Western thought of
the idea of rebirth they are presenting a conception of
evolution which makes
Darwinism but an incident in a larger process. It becomes
but a corollary of a
more general truth. Darwinism, according to Theosophy,
conceives of the
evolution of a species or class through the successive
advances of a line of
individuals, who live and die in the effort to carry some
new development
forward for their successors. For themselves, they reap no
reward-save the
precarious satisfaction, while living, of having fought the
good fight and kept
the line intact.
But reincarnation makes evolution significant for the only
thing that does
evolve-the individual. The race does not evolve, as it is
nothing but a mental
figment, and has no permanent organic individuality. It does
not exist apart
from its individual constituents. The latter are the real
and, for Theosophy,
permanent existences, and hence, if evolution is to have
solid relevance, it
must appertain to the continuing life of the conscious units
or Monads. It is a
conclusion that can be deduced from empirical observation
that growth at any
stage leads to conditions out of which continued growth
springs in the future.
In short, the effect of growth, and its significance,
is-just more growth.1 The
entire program of universal activity is just the procedure
of endless growth.
with halts and rests at relay stations, but with no termini.
The meaning of
present growth only comes to light in the products of later
growth. But it is a
matter of infinite importance whether the growth accruing
from the individual's
exertions in his life span are effects for him or for
another. It is not growth-if
one struggle only to die. How can race history have
significance if the
history of the individuals in it has none? Under Madame
Blavatsky's thesis the
evolutionary reward of effort will go to the rightful party.
Theosophists base their endorsement of the reincarnation
theory upon a number of
dialectical considerations.
First there is the "argument from justice."
Briefly, this holds that the concept
of justice as applicable to mundane affairs can not be
upheld on the basis of
the data furnished by a one-life existence of human beings,
and that if justice
is to be predicated of the mundane situation, reincarnation
is dialectically a
necessary postulate to render the concept tenable. Looking
at the world we see
conditions that force us to admit the presence of
inequalities which, on the
theory of but one life spent here, must be interpreted as
inequities or
iniquities. If the single life here is the entirety of
mortal existence, then.132
the cosmos is socially unjust. The concept of justice must
go, if, with but one
chance for happiness, two persons are placed by forces
beyond their control in
conditions so flagrantly at variance. The vaunted Love and
Justice that are
alleged to rule at the heart of Nature become a travesty of
even human fair
play. No meanest man could wreak such a havoc of injustice
in the world; no
tyrant could so pitilessly outrage the fitness of things.
But, one may ask the Theosophists, how is it that obvious
inequities can become
reconstrued as equities, how can cosmic wrongs be turned to
cosmic
righteousness, merely by admitting additional existences? A
wrong today is not
made right simply because more days are to follow. Because,
the reincarnationist
replies, that event which when seen in its isolated setting
in the one day's
activities, takes on the appearance of injustice, when
viewed in its relation to
former days' doings is discerned to be a sequential event,
proper in its time
and nature, and fulfilling the requirements of justice in an
enlarged scope of
reactions. By mounting the hill of this evolutionary hypothesis,
one becomes
able to locate the grounds of justice over a wider area, to
discover them,
perhaps, entirely outside the bounds of the one-only life
that was observable
from the lowlands. The causes of all that one life unfolds
for us can not in
most cases be found in the occurrences of that life. The
assumption that events
in life come raw and uncolored ethically is only tenable if
we are willing to
regard many occurrences as unrelated and uncaused. Holding
the theorem that
every event in the world's history is a link in a chain of
cause and effect, and
that no occurrence stands alone as an absolute cause or
final effect, modern
moral theory (postulating but one life) arbitrarily breaks
this continuum in
illogical fashion in its assumption that the fortunes of a
single life are not
exactly the resultants of antecedents adequate to account
for them. The vague
and uncertain "laws of heredity" are dragged in to
adjust the uneven balance of
accounts. But they are found incompetent. Nothing can be
found in Shakespeare's
parents, or in Mozart's, or in Lincoln's to explain the
flowering of power and
genius in their progeny, or again the sterility of their
descendants. Did this
man sin or his parents, that he was born blind? Did Mozart
learn to play the
organ or his parents, that he could render a sonata on the
pipe organ at four?
Biological science stands in perplexity before the problems
thus presented, and
ethical science stands equally baffled by anomalous
situations where right and
wrong are apparently unaccountable. Theosophy says the
difficulty here is that
modern theory is trying to understand
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XV of the Book of Life without
knowing that fourteen
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTERs have preceded it. The acts and the predicament of
an individual today are inexplicable because he has had a
long past, which is
not known, but which, were it known, would enable us to say:
nature is just
after all; he has earned his present lot. What the
reincarnation program offers
is the identification of causation and justice. Things are
justly caused. The
modern eye can not see this because it has refused to view
things in their true
perspective, and instead sees them as partial, isolated, and
out of their
context; yet justice reaches its fulfilment in the
individual
"Today or after many days."2
One life does not give Nature time to arrange her trial,
hear the evidence, and
render a verdict. The law of compensation must for the most
part await the slow
grinding of the mills of God, until its adjustments can be
nicely achieved. When
we give up the exaggerated mediaeval view of man's
importance, and cease to
limit to a few thousand years the time allotted the divine
plan to work out our
salvation, we may be open to the persuasion that to crowd
the whole procedure of
the law of compensation, with its millions of entangled
situations, into the
span of a human life, is as egregious an absurdity as that
of trying to cram
into the Biblical six thousand years the entire evolution of
mankind, on a.133
planet which has been fitted for habitation for millions of
years. Theosophy
affirms that man's life will never be properly interpreted
until the whole long
course of its unfoldment on the globe is envisaged. The
individual is the
cumulative product of a long experience, the fruits of which
have passed into
his subjective life and character, whence, though invisible,
they will function
as the causes of action. His relation to the past is the
most substantial part
of his constitution. His present can be explained only in
the light of his past,
and if our gaze is foreshortened to the scant confines of a
single incarnation,
the materials for understanding will be wanting.
The protagonist of rebirth attacks the one-life theory also
with the argument
that it defeats the attempt of the mind to read
"meaning" into the terms of the
life experience. To be sure, he admits, nobody perhaps can
tell just what this
consists of, or in what particular aspect of experience it
is to be found.3
Ultimate "meaning" of world events is doubtless
another of those abstract
finalities which we reach only by a process of infinite
regress to sheer
negation, like ultimate being and ultimate reality, or
ultimate substance. But
it is permissible to employ the term for the purposes of the
argument in its
commonly accepted sense of the later outcome, result or
eventuation of a set of
conditions at any time prevalent, in accordance with the
design of some
directing intelligence. In this general sense the term is
more or less
equivalent to effect or consequence, now hidden but
eventually revealed. The
present or past comes to meaning in the future. The
reincarnationist, of course,
casts his "meanings" in the stream of an assumed
teleological evolution-process.
But if "meaning" is thus assumed to be
discoverable within the constant flow of
things, the difficulty arises that it proves to be an
ever-receding entity like
a shadow. When we try to stabilize or grasp it, it has moved
forward out of
reach. The Theosophist's solution is, of course, that the
ultimate and stable
meaning of things in a temporal sequence is to be found only
in that higher
level of consciousness in which past, present, and future are
gathered up in one
eternal Now. The meaning of events in their
three-dimensional aspects of time,
space, and causality must be located in a four-dimensional
world of
consciousness, where the extended life history of the series
appears as a unit.
As all directions merge into one in the center of a circle,
or at the pole of
the earth, so all relations merge into a fixity of character
in the center of
consciousness. Down (or out) here, says the Theosophist, we
are in a realm of
relativity; we can not look for absolute meaning. All
significance is relative,
to the past, as cause, to the future, as effect. No event
can have meaning if
lifted out of the continuum and viewed by itself alone. An
occurrence is the
product of its precedents and the cause of its consequents.
A single life,
therefore, has meaning, only when scanned as one of a
series. It is admittedly
but a fragment of the life of the race; Theosophy adds that
it is but a fragment
of the life of the individual.
By this line of reasoning the occultist arrives at his grand
conclusion: it is
meaningless, first from man's viewpoint, for him to live but
one physical life
on Earth or any planet; it would be equally meaningless,
from the viewpoint of a
Cosmic Mind (if the laws of logic, the connotations of
"meaning," are laws of
all mind) to have man live but one such life. For a Deity to
send us down here
but once would be without logic or sense-as senseless as for
a parent to send
the child to school for one day only, or one term. Thus
Theosophic argument sees
the one-life theory reduced to absurdity.
The race's one sure verdict about this life is that it wants
completeness and
self-sufficiency. To what larger experience is it then
related? And if related
in some way to a hidden history of infinite reach and
significance, where is the.134
logic of the relation which brings us out of that infinite
sea of other being
for only one brief dip into the life of matter? Certain
metaphysical schools of
thought would answer that we go on progressing infinitely in
the ethereal
worlds. That very affirmation, says the occultist, makes the
one life here
infinitely illogical: on what imaginable basis can one
mundane life be
necessarily related to an infinite spiritual existence? Even
were it whole,
successful, and well-rounded, it would stand as but one
moment somehow
postulated as determining eternity. But suppose that one
dies in infancy, or has
every effort to live well thwarted?--the necessary inclusion
of one physical
life in a totality of indefinite being is empirically shown
as invalid. To get a
logical picture, in the Theosophist's view, you must trace a
long series of
short life-lines at intervals along your line of infinite
being, and only then
does the possibility arise of discerning logical structure,
interrelation, and
the "meanings" hidden in successive stages of
growth.
Occultism points to another irrationality in the mundane
situation if one life
is predicated. It says briefly that we are only beginning to
learn wisdom and
the art of life, when we are torn away from the arena where
those fruits of our
experience can best be exploited. What irrationality
possesses Nature that she
exerts a tremendous effort to evolve in us gifts, faculties,
and knowledge only
to throw her mechanism away when she is just about to get us
in shape for some
good? Nature is thus convicted of being a prodigious
spendthrift-unless she has
a means of conserving the fruits of our present experience
and putting them into
practice in a later cycle. Unless we live again to profit by
what we have
learned, Nature is seen to create values only to destroy
them. The only logical
alternative is to believe that we reincarnate to carry on
with the values and
the capacities we have developed in our former turns at the
earthly chores. Then
Nature does not waste her products, but uses them as tools
for further
operations.
Again, Theosophy declares that philosophy in the West will
find no place in
which to deposit value unless it accepts the rebirth idea. Philosophy-the
attempt to locate reality and permanent value-has been
baffled in its effort
because the organism in which it has presumed to find the
value of evolution
localized persists in dying under its eye. It has nowhere to
place value except
in the race, the components of which are constantly
vanishing. Value can not be
located in any structure which will continue to hold it. The
race is a fiction,
at any rate, and if the individual can not hold his gains,
Nature can not be
said to have achieved any progress that will be permanent.
If the individual can
not reap what he has sown, there is chaos in the counsels of
evolution. If
experience is to head up somewhere so as to become capital,
Theosophy says it
must do so in the individual. The very reason, affirms the
esotericist, that the
Greeks, that all races, "lost their nerve," lost
their zest for earth life and
turned away from it to an hypothecated heaven as a
compensation for its
unbearable hardships, was that in the face of death, at the
relentless approach
of what appeared to spell the doom of all one's efforts and
one's loves, they
were not fortified with the saving knowledge that the good
done in this life was
"made safe for permanency."
The Theosophist's case for reincarnation may be concluded
with a quotation from
L. Adams Beck,4 popular publicist of Orientalism, as
follows:
"Therefore the logic of the Orient has seen as
necessary the return of man to
the area of experience . . . and if the truth of that law be
denied, I have
never heard from either priest or prophet any explanation of
the mysteries or
the apparent injustices of life. Seen by its light they are
set at once in
luminous clarity. That the earliest Christianity was itself
imbued with belief.135
in this fundamental law there can be no doubt, though it was
soon overlaid with
the easier, less individually responsible and more primitive
teaching of
interference by angry or placated Deity, and of the general
supernatural order
of things which commends itself to more primitive man and
places his interests
in the hands of intercessors or priests. It is much simpler
as well as more
comfortable to believe that intercession can obliterate a
life's transgressions
affecting millions of men or events, and a moment's penance fix
an eternal
destiny. So the Western churches set aside the great stream
of philosophy and
shut their eyes to its implications."
Here, alleges the Theosophist, was the real loss of nerve on
the part of the
human race. And it was the Christian theology that caused
it. The Christian
doctrine of the forgiveness of sins is regarded by the
Orientals as a cheap and
tawdry device of a cowardly spirit. The readoption of the
rebirth hypothesis,
avers the Theosophist, would yield for humanity the immense
boon of a restored
faith in the universal law of causality. Because our concept
of inviolable law
in every realm of life has been shattered, or left to stand
unsupported by
cosmic fact, we have reaped the natural harvest of a lawless
age. The idea of
salvation has taught us that law can be shirked, evaded,
bought off.
The second great argument for reincarnation is "the
argument from cyclic law."
This is a deduction from a known process of nature, and not
the postulate of a
procedure in nature. Nature's activity is said to be but the
play of the one
Energy, manifesting to our eyes in countless modifications
of the same general
laws. There are not many laws in nature, but one law, taking
on a variety of
modes in adaptation to varying conditions and instruments.
In a certain deep
sense, then, all natural processes are analogous, the
occultist tells us. Life
knows but the one Law and all its manifestations typify it.
On this
generalization the Theosophists have justified their
employment of the law of
analogy, which figures so extensively in the cosmology and
methodology of the
cult. The principle is stated in Theosophic terminology in
the phrase, "As above
so below." As in the macrocosm so in the microcosm. As
in heaven (ideally), so
on earth (physically). As in the universe at large, so in
man, its image.
Conceiving this principle as substantiated by empirical
observation of the
universe itself, the Theosophist proceeds to look at nature,
and there observes
in her mechanics a certain modus. She works by methods which
suggest the terms
periodic, cyclic, rhythmic. In the fields of natural science
such processes are
to be noted with considerable frequency. Chemistry, physics,
music, biology,
astronomy, and physiology yield instances. It was the
thought of many an ancient
philosophy that life runs in ever-revolving cycles. It has
been affirmed that
rhythmic pulsation is nature's invariable law. All life
processes exhibit some
form or other of the wave-motion principle. Inorganic nature
shows it no less
than organic. The atom itself displays an orbital swing; the
stars gyrate in
cycles. All force flows out in the form of a rhythmic or
periodic beat in the
pulse of energy. Vibration appears to be the very essence of
such things as
light, color, sound, music, electricity, magnetism, heat,
pressure, radio wave,
X, N, alpha, beta, gamma, and the cosmic rays. Next the
process of plant life,
with startling clearness, reveal the same orderly
periodicity of function. The
pulse, the breathing, alternation of work and rest, of
expenditure and repair,
of intermittent fevers, are some of the more pronounced and
observable evidences
of this law, in the realm of the bodily mechanism. Life
appears to be
vibrational.
The Theosophist, too, points to each day as a miniature
cycle, representative of
the larger cycle of a life. It exemplifies the endless
succession of active life
and (comparative or partial) death for the human
personality, in which respect
the latter is seen as reflecting the nature of the Absolute
Being, Brahm. Each.136
day, furthermore, is to a degree an actual reincarnation;
for the soul returns
not to the same body, but to one vastly changed in cell
structure and component
elements throughout. The same soul takes up its life in a renewed
body each day!
Why, then, argues Theosophy, should the idea of
reincarnation seem so bizarre
and objectionable to the mind, when it is the recognized
daily law of our being?
Outside the life of man, in the life of nature, the same
procedure is revealed
on an even larger scale. The life, the soul, of the
vegetable kingdom (and of
even large portions of the animal kingdom) reincarnates each
springtime. The
life energies of the plant world come to being in new forms.
When these end
their cycle, life withdraws into immaterial status for the
winter. But it sleeps
only to wake again. There is no commoner fact than
reincarnation, the
Theosophist reminds us; it is all about us and within us.
And so we are asked:
Does nature omit human life in its universal law of rhythmic
progression? If so,
it is the only place in the entire life of the cosmos, where
periodical
repetition of process is not found.
If it be objected that this is mere reasoning from analogy,
the occultist
rejoins that it is more: it is the application of a law seen
to be applicable
everywhere else in the universe to a particular portion of
the universe. It is
again, as in the argument from justice, the postulation of
law for an area of
experience to which we-in the West-do not believe or know
that the law applies.
The Oriental covers all life with his blanket of law; we
segregate a portion of
life from the rest and make it lawless. He says that history
is rhythmic, racial
life is rhythmic, planetary life is rhythmic, solar life is
rhythmic and that
even the life of God, Brahm, the Absolute, is rhythmic. Is
the life of man then
the only thing not rhythmic? A single life from this point
of view seems to be a
weird anomaly.
If one asks the Theosophist,--How does the individual
survive and carry forward
his values?--he advances an elaborate scheme based on
knowledge allegedly
obtained from the Supermen.
The peregrinations of the individual unit of consciousness
through the worlds is
but a minor detail in a vastly larger mechanism. Theosophy
elaborates Platonic
psychology by teaching that we have at least three
principles lower than the
spiritual one which survives. At any rate the outer part of
us is but a
temporary construction; the inner or subjective part of us is
in truth the real
"we." The body and several etheric or
semi-material "souls" are but the temples,
for a period, of the immortal spirit. If we may use St.
Paul's language again,
when the "natural body" disintegrates, we still
have a "spiritual body" in which
our unit of spirit functions and retains its identity. The
Theosophist calls
this underlying vehicle his "causal body," because
in it are gathered up the
effects of the causes he has generated in his various earth
lives. That more
ethereal vesture is the principle or part of the principle,
that links the
individual Ego to the permanent home of the human entity.
Man in his real inner nature is a unit portion of
(originally) undifferentiated
cosmic Being. He is a fragment of God, but plunged now in
conditions described
as material, for the purpose, as often stated, of lifting
the blank spiritual
consciousness of the Monad to acute spiritual
self-consciousness. He must have
traversed the whole vast gamut of the systems to make his
experience complete.
For the purposes of this varied experience he must clothe
himself in garments of
the matter composing the plane of life on which he finds
himself; and as matter
subsists in varying grades of density, as solid, liquid,
gaseous, etheric, he
must be provided with a garment of each type of material.
This makes him a
multiple being. Each garment of matter becomes his
instrument of contact with.137
the life of that plane. He thus expresses himself in a
different capacity on
each plane. In the world in which he now is he has his
permanent body, the
causal, and three temporary vestures through which he reacts
to the vibrations
of sensation (through his physical body), emotion (through
his astral or kamic
body), and thought (through his mental body). The Ego, the
lord of the body, can
project his attention, or his focus of force, into any one
of the three. He is
the animating principle of all. He himself dwells aloft and
surveys the results
of his contact with the three worlds below. These contacts
constitute his
experience. No touch of experience is ever lost or
forgotten. It is the
postulate of Theosophy that on the substrate ether of nature
there is an
indelible record of every impression. Each one has inscribed
his own history
ineradicably on the Astral Light or Akasha. The causal body,
like the brain in
the nervous system, receives the inner and ultimate impress
of each stimulus
from the outer world and records it there in perpetuity. So
equipped, both for
time and for eternity, man makes his dιbut upon the earth level
again and again,
and takes back into himself each time a harvest of
experience. But what becomes
of him after physical death? He lives on in his causal body
on its own plane-Devachan,
the "heaven world"-after having dropped first his
physical body, then
his astral and finally his lower mental. It is the soul's
time for rest, for
assimilation, for renewal. The soul is not omniscient in its
own right, except
potentially. Its experiences in the lower worlds are
calculated to unfold its
latent powers. Normally the spirit of man, on these
sublimated levels of the
immaterial world, does not have full cognizance of its every
act while in the
lower realms. Our sojourn on earth is in a manner an exile
from our true home.
The difference in vibration rate between the two levels of
life makes it
impossible either for the fragment of the soul in flesh to
remember its former
high condition, except in flashes, or for the higher Ego in
the supernal regions
to know what its lower counterpart is doing. However there
are moments when a
line of communication is established. During earth life the
lower fragment is
occasionally elevated to a momentary rapport with its higher
Self, and in that
instant receives a whole volume of helpful instruction,
advice, or inspiration.
These are the experiences that change the whole view and
alter a life. On the
other hand the higher principle at least twice during the
sojourn of its lower
self in the causal body is put in touch with its earthly
life. Just after the
conclusion of each earth period, and again just before the
commencement of the
next, the soul is granted a view of its total history,
retrospective in the
first case and prospective in the second. The first of these
experiences may
occur while the soul is still in the body just before death,
or, most commonly,
in the finer sheaths just after it.5 It is an elevation of
normal consciousness
to a high pitch and covers a complete survey of the whole
past life, with
emphasis on the inner moral value of its acts.6 The Ego, in
the light of this
panoramic retrospect, is put in position to reflect over its
past, note its
progress, evaluate its record in relation to total
evolutionary requirements,
and is thus enabled to fix permanently the gain made, the
faculty sharpened, the
insight deepened, the poise established, and the capacity
developed.
In similar fashion, just preceding its outgoing upon another
mundane adventure
the Ego, aided by higher and more resourceful beings known
as the Lords of
Karma, is shown in a summary manner the situation in which
he stands in relation
to cosmic evolution, the stage he has reached, the next
succeeding problems to
be met, the ground to be covered, and the possibilities of a
variety of careers
open to him in his next dip into concrete experience. In
view of the most
important considerations involved in this manifold
situation, the Ego himself
makes the choice of his next environment and personality! It
is the man himself
who prearranges the main outlines of his coming life on
earth, and the great
Lords of Karma aid him to carry his chosen plan into
execution. We ourselves
preside over our next-life destiny. But we make that choice,
not at random, but.138
in strictly logical relation to the total retrospective
view. Being shown in a
moment of vivid lucidity what we have next to learn, we make
our selection of
ways and means to meet the immediate requirements of the
situation. Our choice
is not entirely free, for we must choose with reference to
past obligations and
karmic encumbrances, which must be liquidated. The soul with
vision opened in
the world of causes, sees oftentimes that salvation,
progress, lies in no other
course. The lower entity would not so choose, to be sure,
but the higher Ego
sees better what is good for its lower self to undergo. An
outwardly untoward
condition may provide the requisite setting for the working
out of some
particular moral advance. So he chooses his own parents, the
race, nation or
locale of his next life, the type of physical personality he
will animate, the
specific phases of character he will seek to build up. It is
likely that he will
aim to concentrate his experience upon the development of
some one virtue which
he has sadly lacked hitherto, and will choose a situation
with a view to its
influence in that direction. He must acquire all the virtues
one after another.
His choice once made, the veil of Lethe is again drawn over
his vision, the two
elements of his being are again drawn apart into their
separate spheres, and the
lower man descends into the world of matter for another
trial at life. But he is
now oblivious of the fact that it was his own wish to be
thrown into the habitat
where he finds himself. He may either wonder at the fortunate
fate that has
befallen him, or rebel against a seeming injustice. He seeks
happiness in
diverse ways, but is seldom satisfied with what he gets.
What he is sure to get,
however, in whatever direction he may seek, is experience.
And this is the one
thing that evolution is concerned about. Growth, not
happiness (except
incidentally), is the goal of his life. Under the illusion
that happiness may be
found in this condition or in that, he will plunge into all
sorts of
experiences, which will prove educative.
There is much detail in connection with the methods used by
nature to effect the
transition of the soul into and out of the successive
bodies. At death the Ego
drops first the physical vehicle, which goes back to its
mineral components. For
a brief time thereafter it has for its outermost and densest
sheath the etheric
double, pictures of which have been caught in photography,
and the material of
which is the ectoplasm of the Spiritualists. All the finer
bodies, be it
understood, interpenetrate the physical and each other in
turn, as solid,
liquid, gas, and ether might be put into the same earthly
vessel. The dropping
of the outermost leaves the others intact and capable of
freer activity. The
occasional appearance of the etheric double, which while it
lasts, has an
affinity for the physical body, gives us the basis for ghost
stories. It is not
usually discernible by normal vision, but can be seen by
sensitives. After a few
weeks at most this body likewise disintegrates, and the
astral body is then the
peripheral envelope. It keeps the Ego within the realm of
emotional vibrations,
and in this world the experiences which the Ego shared of
this sort must be
digested. The consciousness of the Ego must tarry on this
plane until the
strength of his desire and passional nature wears itself
out, and he is purged
of gross feeling. After months or a few years the astral in
turn disintegrates.
This leaves but one of the "onion-peels" to be
thrown off before the soul is
released finally from the interests and tendencies that held
it on earth. This
is the lower manas, or lower mental body, whose material
responds to the
energies of thought. As the physical body is absent, the
forces going into
concrete thought expend themselves, so to say, in thin air,
until this body of
"mind-stuff" eventually dissolves, like the
others. The soul is then housed only
in its spirit body, in which it abides until, after a long
rest, it feels again
the urge for additional physical experience..139
The nature of the soul's life in the body of spirit is
practically beyond the
resources of human description. We can only conceive of it
by making the effort
to picture the play of immaterial vibrational energies apart
from a mechanism.
Its manifestations in terms of our cognitions are those of
unimaginable bliss,
buoyancy, elation, and vividness. It is the heaven world
which all mystical
religions have striven to depict. The tradition of its
glories has served as the
basic fact in all religions of post-modern compensation.
Theosophy names it
Deva-Chan, the home of the Devas. During the soul's
residence there it bathes
itself in the currents of finer energy, which serve to renew
its vitality,
somewhat depleted by its last contacts with the coarser
vibrations of earth
life. (The analogy with the nightly recuperation from the
day's fatigues is
obvious here.) The Theosophists and the Orientals have fixed
the length of this
interim roughly at 1,500 years, but analogy with human life
would indicate a
shorter duration. It is said, however, that the rest periods
shorten as
evolution proceeds, until finally an advanced Ego requires
but a few years
between incarnations. The less experienced souls require
more rest.
However long or short, the soul's sleep, or life in the
ethereal realms, comes
to an end and the craving for another day's activities
asserts itself. It is
given the preliminary vision already spoken of, and then it
begins its "descent"
from a world of subtle to a world of coarse vibrations. A
vibratory energy has
the power to organize matter of appropriate constitution.
The ideal forces of
the Ego, emanating from the higher planes, contact in turn
each lower plane,
throw the matter of each plane into organization along the
lines of magnetic
radiation marked out by the subtle energies in play, and
thus construct bodies
shaped by their own inner nature. In this way the Ego builds
up successively a
lower mental, an astral, an etheric, and a new physical
body. Taking possession
of the last is a gradual process, which begins in reality
about the age of seven
and is not completed, we are told, until the later stages of
youth. Before seven
the infant body is said to be in control of an elemental
entity or animal soul,
a being quite distinct from the Ego himself. The Ego
hovering over it, must make
a gradual adaptation of its new home to its own nature, and
the process is
sometimes not easy. Sometimes the Ego realizes after a time
of observation and
trial that the young body is not capable of being properly
used for a life
period, and re-nounces its attempt to ensoul it. The body
then languishes and is
carried off by death.
With all its new vehicles gathered around it, the soul
begins to function in the
earth life once more. Its equipment is now complete for
registering every type
of contact, physical, emotional, and mental, and this
activity constitutes its
life. The new bodies are built on the model of the inner
character, which as we
have seen, has been preserved in germinal form within the
depths of the
spiritual organization, in a fashion analogous to the
vegetable seed. All the
bodies are thus the tell-tale indices of the inner nature.
Our character comes
to expressive form in our garments of flesh, feeling, and
thought. The results
of former practice, training, discipline, skill come to
light as inherent
ability, natural brilliancy, precocity, genius. We think
these are the gifts of
the child's parents. But the parents only furnish a fine
body in which a fine
soul may fitly incarnate. By the law of affinity a fine soul
would not be drawn
to a coarse body. Such a combination would also infringe the
law of justice.
Naturally the question as to why we do not remember our
former lives arises
here. Theosophy explains, firstly, that many people have
remembered their former
lives, and, secondly, that the reason most of us do not is
that the Ego, which
does remember, can not easily impress its memories upon the
new personality. At
each rebirth the soul finds itself in a totally new body of
flesh, and the old
life must express itself through a new nervous mechanism,
with a new brain. The.140
lower personality does not have any memory of its former
experiences, because
they were strictly not its experiences. Those experiences
were registered on
another brain which is now mouldered away, and only the
digest, the moral
quintessence of those activities has been preserved, and
even they have accrued
to the higher Ego, not to the personality. As it is the
purpose of our long
evolution to effect the union between the lower and the
higher personalities, we
shall eventually come to the time when the Ego will be able
to bring its
accumulated memory of all its past through to the brain of
the man on earth.
The occult psychologist asserts that by hypnotic methods one
can be made to
catch glimpses of his past life or lives through the
subconscious mind. Likewise
Oriental Yoga claims that without hypnotism, resolute mental
control will enable
the consciousness to penetrate into this past field.
Theosophists allege that
their practiced clairvoyants can at will direct their vision
upon a person's
former lives, and many records of these investigations have
been published.
Indissolubly connected with the idea of reincarnation is the
doctrine of Karma.
If reincarnation is the method by which the individual reaps
what he has sown,
Karma is the principle back of the method. Reincarnation is
the technique of
justice in the universe, and hence Karma is the ’rc" or
deterministic principle.
It is the law of necessity that determines the play of
forces in evolution; it
is in plain terms the law of cause and effect, of the
equivalence of action and
reaction. The word in Sanskrit etymology means
"action." Acts bind the actor to
consequences. Actions produce movements in the currents of
evolutionary forces.
The law which guides these forces into their inevitable
courses and
eventuations, is the law of Karma. It is the law of
equilibrium and balance, the
law of compensation. Nature abhors a moral vacuum (which the
Theosophist alleges
exists in want of the rebirth hypothesis) as she does a
physical one, and Karma
is the pressure which she brings to bear about and upon a
moral deficiency to
remove it.
A widespread idea has grown up among non-Theosophists that
Karma means
retributive punishment. This is essentially a misconception,
though a certain
measure of the law's operation may take a form roughly
resembling that which
punishment might take. But nature does not say to the
culprit, "You have done
wrong; now take that!" She says to him, "You have
done wrong; now see what it
has brought you." She does not hit back, even to
redeem; she attaches
consequences to acts.
There is much misunderstanding upon this point, even among
Theosophists. It is a
common expression among them, when some one is mentioned as
having met with
mishap, that it is the working out of his evil Karma. This
may be crudely
correct, yet it is more likely to be a misinterpretation of
the doctrine. The
educative value of experience may at times point to the
future, and not always
to the past. We live to learn, and we learn in order to move
on to more expanded
life. We can not be eternally paying off old scores. A
strenuous ordeal may be
the beginning of a new education, not the graduation from an
old one. The Ego
must be confronted with new problems and come into its
heritage of evolved
capacity through the solution of new difficulties. Much
misconstrued "bad Karma"
is simply our embroilment in new problems for our advanced
lessons in the ars
maius vivendi. It is thus difficult to dogmatize about the
significance of
karmic disabilities or predicaments. Strictly, in a sense,
both past and future
references are indicated in any experience. Karma links us
all to the chain of
cause and effect through the entire time process.
Not only are the causes set up by the individual persons
bound to work out to
fruition, but there is also what is called collective Karma.
Wherever bodies or.141
groups of people act together, as in a senate, a tribe, or a
mob, their
collective action must bear its fruit like any other action.
Karma engendered
aggregately must, of course, be carried aggregately. A
nation or a race may be
guilty of wrong on a colossal scale; reincarnation must
reassemble these groups
in order that the totality of responsible persons may pay
the debt. A senate
declares war: millions are killed; that senate, acting well
or ill, must be
brought within the sweep of the reaction later on. So there
is community Karma,
tribal Karma, national, racial, and other types of
collective Karma. An
organization such as the Church, the Government, even
conventional social
mentality, has its Karma, and not only the individual
members of these groups,
but more especially the single heads of them, must bear in
themselves the brunt
of nature's subsequent reactions.7
We are now ready to ask what the goal of all this long
evolutionary training of
the individual or groups may be. What is the purpose and in
what will it
eventuate? Or will the law of spiral growth carry us round
and round eternally?
That the question is one of primary importance is indicated
by the fact that the
answers commonly advanced for it have given determinate
shape to most of the
Oriental religions. The point at issue has been the central
theme of the great
religious faiths, and a dominant consideration in their
ethical systems.
The answer accepted by Theosophy is-Nirvana. In much
Oriental thought mortal
life is endured only because it leads to Nirvana. The
Buddhist philosophies of
escape contemplate the bliss of Nirvana as the eventual
house of refuge from
these existences in the conditions of time, relativity, and
imperfection.
But the Oriental does not seek annihilation. The West has discovered,
or is
discovering, that the interpretations forced upon the term
Nirvana by its early
scholars and Orientalists have missed the point quite
decidedly. Opinion has
wavered for a long time but inclines now to believe that the
concept behind the
term does not connote total extinction of conscious being.
Oldenburg contended
that it meant "a state beyond the conception or
reason," and that satisfies most
Orientals. Theosophy has, with practical unanimity, taken
the position that it
implies in no sense an annihilation of being, but that it
does quite definitely
involve the extinction of the personality of man. The
personality, Theosophy
claims, is only a temporary shadow of the man anyway, and
its eventual
dispersion and annihilation is highly desirable as
liberating the true Self from
hampering obstruction in the exercise of his full capacities
for life. This
lower counterpart or representative of the inner Self is
what the Buddhists and
Theosophists declare is destined for annihilation, partly at
the end of each
life, completely at the end of the cycle. But the
eradication of his personality
permits him a grander, freer life than ever before. Many
schools of Hindu
thought regard Nirvana as a life of bliss. This is a
postulate of Theosophy
likewise. Nirvana, then, instead of being the extinction of
consciousness, is
the elevation of consciousness to a state of ineffable
splendor and ecstasy.
Feeling, thought, sensation are lost in the beatific
vision..142
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER X
ESOTERIC WISDOM AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE
It is interesting to scan Theosophic doctrine with an eye to
noting its relation
to the discoveries of modern science. We might begin by
comparing it with the
Darwinian conception of evolution. Madame Blavatsky puts the
Theosophic view of
the evolution of man in four propositions in The Secret
Doctrine:
1. Man is a product of animal evolution on our planet only
with reference to his
physical body. The Deva evolution in other worlds was the
source of his
independent spirit and his intellect, his will and his
divine nature.
2. Man preceded the mammalian animals on earth, instead of
being evolved from
them.
3. Man is not at all a descendant from any ape-like ancestor
in an advancing
line of evolution; on the contrary, the monkey is the
descendent of (early) man.
4. Man has never been other than man, though not always as
now.
Darwinian evolution and materialistic science envisage the
development of matter
into organic form, and out of that the unfolding of
subjective ideation or
psychic life-consciousness, reason, intuition-as products of
the two elements,
matter and motion or energy. Occultism views this process as
predicable only of
the building of the physical forms. Instead of regarding the
body as having
evolved the faculties of reason and intelligence, the secret
teaching speaks of
a spiritual evolution as going on concomitantly, and in
attachment with, a
physical one. The conscious intelligence in man is not the
evolved expression of
the psychic life of his organism. There is such a cell
psychism in the body, and
its totality is the subconscious mind, but it is in no sense
the thinking,
willing soul of the man. There are many "missing
links" between organic instinct
and conscious rationality. Evolution in its higher aspects
can not be accounted
for if we limit the agencies at work to the blind forces of
matter and motion
acting under the mechanical influences of environment.
"Nature unaided fails."
The purely mechanical or semi-intelligent energies are able
to carry the growing
organisms of any kingdom from the lower to the higher forms
of life in that
kingdom, but without the aid of the superior intelligences
of the kingdom just
above them they are never able to leap over the gap-the
difference in the atomic
structure-which separates them from the next realm of higher
vibratory
existence. Plants bring minerals over the gap to cell
organization; animals
introduce plant cells to some degree of sensation
experience; man tutors the
higher animals right up to the door of rudimentary
intelligence. In similar.143
relationship the Deva evolution, completed in the Venus
chain, is linked with
animal man to bridge the gap for him into the kingdom of
spiritual intelligence.
In line with this thesis Madame Blavatsky asserts that the
principles of wisdom
and spiritual aspiration never were evolved out of the
material constitution of
man's bodily life. They were superadded to his organism from
the celestial
worlds. They could not have come up to him from earth; they
descended upon him
from the skies. Each succeeding wave of outpouring life from
the Logos carries
evolution a step higher, and the law of the interrelation of
all life is that
each higher grade reaches back to help its lower neighbor
ahead, the while it
reaches out to grasp the hand of its superiors. This must be
taken as accounting
for the fact that all the religious Saviors have been
depicted as Mediators
coming down from a heavenly or celestial realm. Man's divine
nature is the
beautified angelic product of a former cycle of growth, and
his true Self is
itself the Deva that had consummated its salvation
elsewhere. The fragment of
divinity that constitutes our innermost Selfhood had itself
been refined and
purged in the fiery furnace of earlier experiences. Between
man's purely
physical development and the evolution of his spiritual
nature "there exists an
abyss which will not easily be crossed by any man in the
full possession of his
intellectual faculties. Physical evolution, as modern
Science teaches it, is a
subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral
development on the same lines
is the insane dream of a crass materialism."1
To trace the origin of human morals back to the social
instincts of the ant and
the bee, and to affirm that our divine consciousness, our
soul, intellect, and
aspirations have worked their way up from the lower
capacities of the simple
cell-soul of the "gelatinous Bathybius,"
hopelessly condemns modern thought to
imbecility and renders its efforts to understand our growth
futile. Instead of
blind forces Madame Blavatsky posits not only a germinal
design, but Designers.
"They are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the
absolute sense of the term.
They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the
impulse given them by the
. . . Master-Mason, the One Life and Law."2
Nature works not blindly, but through her own highly
perfected agents, the
Logoi, the Creators.
The second proposition-that man preceded the mammalian
orders-runs counter to
Darwinian hypothesis. The Secret Doctrine affirms that the
mammalia were the
products of early man. Man had gone first over the
evolutionary ground of the
stone, the plant, and the animal realms. But these stones,
plants, animals were
the astral prototypes, the filmy presentments, of those of
the Fourth Round, and
even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the
spectral shadows of the
present forms. No forms of life had as yet become physical.
Around these
ethereal shells, then, in the succeeding Round, which
brought them closer to the
physical scene, were aggregated the bodily forms which
brought them into
objective existence. The cast-off shells of man's former
embodiments became the
moulds of lower species. Before astral man descended into
physical begetting,
he had, it will be remembered, the power of Kriyasakti, by
which he could
procreate his replica by "the will, by sight, by touch,
and by Yoga." So before
the separation into sexes, "all this vital energy, scattered
far and wide from
him, was used by Nature for the production of the first
mammalian-animal
forms."3
All lower types, struggling toward man as their
"divine" goal, are helped by
receiving the effluvia from man's own life as animating
principles and
constructive models..144
The third proposition follows: that man is not the
descendant of any line of
animal evolution, hence certainly not of the apes. The truth
is, the monkey is
the descendant of man. The case is stated as follows:
"Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great
forests of Sumatra, the
degraded and dwarfed examples-'blurred copies,' as Mr.
Huxley has it-of
ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the
earliest sub-races of the
Fourth Root-Race. . . . The ape we know is not the product
of natural evolution,
but an accident, a cross-breed between an animal being, or
form, and man."4
The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human
being. They are
entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal
forms which
resulted from the bestiality of the latest Third and
earliest Fourth Race men.
The numberless traditions about Satyrs are not fables, but
represent an extinct
race of animal-men. The animal Eves were their foremothers
and the early human
Adams their forefathers. All this means, as we are told,
that the late Lemurian
or Third Race men cohabited with huge female animals. This
occurred when these
early forebears of ours had not yet been endowed with the
Manasic principle, or
Mind. Their animal appetencies being fully active, with no
check of mind or
discernment of good and evil upon their acts, they thus
committed the "Sin of
the Mindless" in begetting hybrid monsters, half man,
half animal. This is the
occult explanation of the blending of both animal and human
characteristics in
the one creature. Later on in the Fourth or Atlantean Race,
the men of that
epoch, who were now endowed with Mind and should have known
better, committed
the same crime with the descendants of the Lemuro-animal
conjunctions, and thus
established the breeds of monkeys of the present era. But
these semi-intelligent
creatures will reach the human stage in the next cycle.
Madame Blavatsky endeavors to show that in animal evolution
we see anything but
an unbroken steady drift toward perfection of form. Evidence
of one continuous
line of unfoldment is totally wanting. There are many
diverse lines, and
furthermore, some of them apparently are retrograding.
Then the argument based on the study of the human embryo is
pressed vigorously.
Occultism accepts the evidence that the human foetus
recapitulates quickly all
the previous stages of racial evolution. Based on that fact
there should be
found a stage of foetal growth in which ape characteristics
predominate. But
there is no monkey stage of the foetus in evidence.
The fourth proposition-that man has never been less than
man, though to be sure
he has been different-is the outcome of the basic statement
that he is, in his
inner nature, a being who had already perfected his
evolution. Theosophy claims
that a thousand oddities and disparities manifest in our
present life are
elucidated by the assumption that we are high beings
functioning at a level far
beneath our proper dignity-for the sake of lifting up a host
of animal souls to
their next station. We have never been less than divine; it
is our animal lower
self that presents the aspects of fallibility and depravity.
But in relation to all these theories as to man's
constitution, the question
always arises: What is the authority for all this secret
knowledge? Theosophy
stands firmly on the affirmation that the only basis of
authority in the
revelation of any religion is long training in actual
experience with life.
Knowledge can be engendered only by living experience. There
is no road to
knowledge other than that of learning. Theosophic knowledge
comes from our
Elders in the school of life. They alone have been through
enough of earthly
experience to have acquired a master knowledge of its laws.
Hence it is the.145
position of Theosophy that no religion can claim more
empirical authority than
the esoteric ancient wisdom.
Madame Blavatsky declared that occultism had no quarrel with
so-called exact
science "where the conclusions of the latter are
grounded on a substratum of
unassailable fact." It is only when its exponents
attempt to "wrench the
formation of Cosmos and its living Forces from Spirit, and
attribute all to
blind matter, that the Occultists claim the right to dispute
their theories."
She declares that Science is limited to the investigation of
one single aspect
of human life, that which falls within the range of sense
objectivity and
rational inference. There are other aspects of that life and
of nature,--the
metaphysical, the supersensual, for the cognition of which
science has no
instrumentalities. Science is devoting its energies to a
study of the forces of
life as they come to expression in the phenomenal or sense
domain. Hence it is
constantly viewing nothing but the residuary effects of the
activity of such
forces. These are but the shadow of reality, says Madame
Blavatsky. Science is
thus dealing only with appearances, hints, adumbrations, and
effects of life,
and this is all it ever can deal with so long as it shuts
its eyes to the
postulates of occultism. Science clings to the plane of
effects; occultism rises
to the plane of causes. Science studies the expressions of
life; esotericism
looks at life itself, the real force behind the phenomenon.
To bring the
elements of real causality within his cognition,
"the scientist must develop faculties which are
absolutely dormant-save in a few
rare and exceptional cases-in the constitution of the
offshoots of our present
Fifth Root-Race in Europe and America. He can in no other
conceivable manner
collect the facts on which to bear his operations. Is this
not apparent on the
principles of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike?"5
Science, however, asserts that we can predicate nothing of
the nature of the
metaphysical realm, unless and until our instruments bring
its data within our
sensuous purview. Occultists answer: earlier beings evolved
on this or other
planets have already developed the powers through which
these metaphysical
realities are brought under observation. Occultism adds that
these claims are
not based on imagination, but on the experience of those who
have taken the
trouble by right methods of discipline to prove for
themselves the existence and
reach of the powers in dispute. They are simply latent
capacities of the human
soul, as all our other capacities were once latent, and time
and training will
convince any one of their presence in the organism as an
integral part of the
endowment of man. The occultist rests his case at last, not
on fantasy, but on a
fancy empiricism. He ends by flaunting in the face of
science its own present-day
admissions that the door to further scientific knowledge of
the world is
barred by the limitations of its instruments and methods,
not by the limitations
of human experience.
Madame Blavatsky, fifty-odd years ago, prophesied the
arrival of the present
scientific predicament, and were she alive today she would
doubtless register
the "I-told-you-so" expression. She would tell the
modern world that it is at
the end of its survey of the mechanical activities of matter
and that the search
has left it uninstructed and unenlightened; it has but
driven the mystery from
the realm of the actual into that of the occult.
The development of Madame Blavatsky's treatise on the
relation of the Old
Science to the upstart modern pretender proceeds with the
presentation of many
angles, sides, or facets of the theories above propounded
and the introduction
of much evidence in support of the position. She begins by
showing that science
admits knowing nothing in reality of Matter, the Atom,
Ether, Force. The atom is.146
a fanciful construction, and variously constituted to suit
the needs of each
separate department of science, be it physics or chemistry.
It is not known what
Light is, whether corpuscular or not. First it was an
undulation of matter,
waves in the ether; then it was the passage of particles.
Now it is discovered
or believed to be both waves and particles, or wavicles.6
"The atom is the most
metaphysical object in creation," she says. "It is
an entified abstraction."
Matter, in its true inner essence, can not be fathomed by
physical science, for
the actual components of it lie several degrees (of
rarefaction) further back on
the inner planes. It is ether, and the soul of that, in its
turn, is the
elemental primordial substance, the Akasha. "It is
matter on quite another plane
of perception and being," and only the occult science
can apprehend it. Newton
is quoted7 as saying that "there is some subtle spirit
by the force and action
of which all movements of matter are determined." He
adds that it is
inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should act upon
other matter in the
billiard-ball fashion, without the mediation of something
else which is not
material. Occultism sees the universe run by the Noumenon,
"which is a distinct
and intelligent individuality on the other side of the
manifested mechanical
universe." Matter is not the agent; it is rather the
condition, the necessary
vehicle, or sine qua non, for the exhibition of these subtler
forces on the
material plane.
We have noted Madame Blavatsky's references in Isis to the
idea that gravitation
was the wrong concept for the attractive power exerted by
all bodies, and that
magnetism was the better description. The same idea is emphasized
in The Secret
Doctrine repeatedly. She says that Kepler came to this
"curious hypothesis"
nearly three hundred years ago. It was what Empedocles meant
by his Love and
Hate, symbols of the intelligent forces of nature.
"That such magnetism exists in Nature is as certain as
that gravitation does
not; not at any rate in the way in which it is taught by
science."8
Matter, to the occultist, has many more forms of existence
than the one that
science knows, and these more refined ones are the most
important. Theosophy is
largely built up on the supposed gradations of matter from
the gross to the
ultimately fine. It is the existence of the rarer ethereal
grades which supply
to thought the data essential for the construction of a
metaphysical science.
The true or essential nature of the higher potencies can
never be inferred from
their remote existential manifestations; and this is why
science can never hope
to come upon more fundamental knowledge while misled by the
merely phenomenal
phalanx of outward effects. Matter in its outer veil of
solid substantiality is
illusive, for it is the dead appearance of a living thing.
"It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of matter
and the infinite
divisibility of the atom that the whole science of Occultism
is built."9
This, she says, opens limitless horizons to states of
substance of unimaginable
tenuity, but all informed by the Divine Breath. Nature is as
unlimited in her
possibilities of fineness as she is in those of gross size,
in the interior
direction as in outward spatial extent.
Occult philosophy describes the Sun as a living glowing
magnet. The photosphere
is the reservoir of solar vital energy, "the vital
electricity that feeds the
whole system." The real living Sun, its Spirit, is
continually "self-generating
its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives
out."10 There is thus a
regular circulation-analogous to that in the human body-of
vital fluid
throughout our solar system during its Manvantaric or life
period. The sun.147
contracts rhythmically at every return of it, as does the
heart. Only it takes
the "solar blood" eleven years to pass through its
auricles and ventricles
before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great
veins and arteries of
the system.
Madame Blavatsky notes modern science's statements about the
eleven-year
periodicity in the increase and diminution of sunspot
activity as corroboration
of her circulatory theory. The universe breathes as men do,
and as our globe
breathes every twenty-four hours, she asserts.
Madame Blavatsky has to reconcile the two seemingly
contradictory statements of
occultism "that matter is eternal" and that
"the atom is periodical and not
eternal." The trick is done by resorting to the
distinction that matter, while
eternal in its undifferentiated basic form, assumes
periodically the atomic
structure during each stage of manifestation. Sir William
Crookes' "meta-elements"
are referred to and his statement that atoms of certain
elements
showed "sensitive character" in effecting certain
combinations. Sir William's
assertion that the atoms share with all other creatures the
attributes of decay
and death is also noted. There will be a dissolution of the
universe at the end
of the Manvantara; but not a destruction, in the terms of
physical science. That
is, the energy will not be lost.
Sound is said to be--
"a stupendous force, of which the electricity generated
by a million of Niagaras
could never counteract the smallest potentiality, when
directed with occult
knowledge."11
In the
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER on the "Elements and Atoms" chemistry is affirmed to be the
science that will lead to the discovery of occult truth.
Crookes, she says, is
near to the lair of the "protyle." Scientists have
often sought for an element
of sub-zero atomic weight, hydrogen equalling 1. "A
substance of negative weight
is not inconceivable," says Helmholtz. Such a substance
would approach the
nature of the occult protyle, or sub-atomic spirit-matter.
In other spheres and
in interstellar regions there are infinite variations of
material composition,
of life formations, of semi- and super-intelligent beings.
Yet the life forces of these higher and lower existences are
interblended with
our own objective world; they are around us, and, what is
more, in us; and they
vitally affect our life. All forms of life are linked
together in one immense
chain. Some of these existent worlds may be as formless as
Breathe, like the
tail of a comet, which would sweep over our globe unknown to
us, yet not without
influence upon us.
Chemistry, she announces, once the unit protyle is
hypothetically accepted, as
ether was, will perish, to be reincarnated as the New
Alchemy, or Metachemistry.
"The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated
in time the archaic Aryan
works on Occultism and even the Vedas and Puranas."12
Madame Blavatsky formulates a law of occult dynamics that a
given amount of
energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is
productive of far greater
results than the same amount expended on the physical
objective plane of
existence. This law becomes fundamental in the Theosophic
system of ethics.
On page 612 of Book I, Madame Blavatsky makes a prophecy
which was remarkably
fulfilled, that "between this time (1886) and 1897
there will be a large rent
made in the veil of nature and materialistic science will
receive a death-blow.".148
All science is familiar with the rapid incidence of new
discoveries and
revelations that fell within that period, crowned with the
enunciation of the
electrical nature of matter and the facts of radiant energy.
Madame Blavatsky's position with regard to modern scientific
discovery and
theory has been provocative of much discussion since her
day. The same general
situation obtains in her case as with Paracelsus, Boehme,
Swedenborg, and other
mystical prophets of science, who spoke with a show of
authority of the
hypotheses which science has in recent years taken up. They
have repeatedly
anticipated the propositions of our most advanced learning.
Madame Blavatsky's
achievement in this line is notable; and it is the common
assertion of
Theosophists that science in the past five decades has done
little but verify
their Founder's scientific pronouncements. Dr. A. Marques'
book, Scientific
Corroborations of Theosophy and William Kingsland's The
Physics of the Secret
Doctrine have set forth the many basic confirmations of
H.P.B.'s work by our
evolving physical science.13 It must be remembered in this
connection that the
scientific theories put forth by Madame Blavatsky can not be
credited to her as
spiritual intuitions or guesses, a certain proportion of
which chanced to be
well grounded. She did not arrive at these constructions in
her own mentality;
she gave them out as elaborations of an ancient science, of
which she was merely
the reinterpreter. Furthermore the various theories are put
forward, not as
isolated items of knowledge, but as integral parts of a
comprehensive system
which in its reach and inclusiveness has hardly elsewhere
been matched. While
science is obviously not proving the correctness of that
large portion of her
ideas which pass beyond its domain, in those matters
touching its special
province, into which she so boldly ventured now and again,
it has frequently
substantiated her "re-discoveries," though not all
of them.
It is significant that Madame Blavatsky's occult philosophy
aims to restore to
scientific method the deductive procedure. It is her
insistent claim that
materialistic science, with its inductive method-an attempt
to work from the
rind back into the kernel, from effects back to causes-could
never learn
anything deep or true of the real universe. The world can
only be explained in
the light of great archaic principles; and these the modern
world foolishly
contemns, not knowing they were taught to disciplined
students of old. They
postulated that all things had their origin in spirit and
thence they reasoned
outward and downward; until they saw facts as items in a
vast deductive plan. If
man persists in rejecting such deduction, he will naturally
never find the key
to the great mystery; for by mulling around amongst the
shadows of earthly
existence, he merely learns to know the interplay of
shadows. To understand the
shadows he must start with the light..149
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XI
THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL PRACTICE
The Secret Doctrine set forth the basic conceptions of
Theosophy; there remained
for Madame Blavatsky one more task of large proportions-to
make an application
of the principles she had expounded to the problem of
practical living. This was
done to a large extent in a work which occupied her during a
portion of the
three or four years of life left her after the completion of
her major effort.
The Key to Theosophy was put out by her in response to much
questioning as to
how the vast body of knowledge outlined in her works could
be related more
closely to common understanding. It is done in the form of a
dialogue between a
questioner and a Theosophist, Madame Blavatsky herself. The
work shows as much
of the author's dynamic mind as do her other publications,
but there is no
attempt to make a further display of scholarship. It was an
endeavor to bring
out the intent and meaning of the doctrines, to ease
difficulties, and to
clarify and reλnforce some earlier presentations. It was
intended to serve as a
manual, but it is far from elementary in parts. In it are
two now notable items;
her warning against Spiritualism in the early section, and
near the end her
seemingly prophetic statement that there would later develop
an irresistible
trend among her successors, in spite of her clarion
warnings, to make a church
out of her Society.
Reflection, her own experience, and her observations of the
behavior of many
Theosophists, who were figuratively staggering about under
the intoxicating
spell of so strong a stimulant, deeply impressed her with
the necessity of
placing a far greater emphasis upon the relation of occult
philosophy and ethics
and spirituality. Her own performances of extraordinary
psychic feats, she saw,
had helped to create the peril that lay in an overemphasis
on the desirability
of unfolding the latent powers of the soul. Madame Blavatsky
was thus made
keenly aware of her responsibility in giving out freely what
supposedly had been
wisely guarded.
Her solicitude was particularly aroused by the rush of many
new devotees into
the cultivation of the psychic senses, a feature implicit in
the esoteric
teachings. The persistent presupposition that psychic
abilities were the
infallible badge of lofty spirituality, soon showed its
presence. Then, too, the
subtle temptation to regard one's predisposition to
Theosophy and one's
connection with it as evidence that one has been singled out
by the great
Masters as uniquely worthy, or that one is far on in the
line of evolution, was
certain to come to the surface. Madame Blavatsky could be
charitable to ordinary.150
human frailties in these directions, but shallow spiritual
pretension bought
forth her lash.
We are prepared, then, to understand the vehemence with
which she uttered her
first official statement on this subject through the
editorial pages of her new
magazine, Lucifer, May 15, 1888. The article had the
suggestive title:
"Occultism versus the Occult Arts." It is prefaced
with a triad from Milton:
"I have oft heard, but ne'er believed till now,
There are who can by potent magic spells
Bend to their crooked purpose Nature's laws."
She minces no words.
"Will these candidates to wisdom and power feel very
indignant if told the plain
truth? It is not only useful, but it has now become
necessary to disabuse most
of them and before it is too late. The truth may be said in
a few words: There
are not in the West half a dozen among the fervent hundreds
who call themselves
'Occultists' who have even an approximately correct idea of
the nature of the
science they seek to master. With a few exceptions they are
all on the highway
to Sorcery. Let them restore some order in the chaos that
reigns in their minds,
before they protest against this statement. Let them first
learn the true
relation in which the occult sciences stand to occultism,
and the difference
between the two, and then feel wrathful if they still think
themselves right.
Meanwhile let them learn that Occultism differs from magic
and other secret
sciences as the glorious sun does from the rushlight, . . .
as the immortal
Spirit of Man . . . differs from the mortal clay . . . the
human body."
She then enumerates four kinds of Esoteric Knowledge or
Sciences:
1. Yajna-Vidya:1 Occult powers awakened by ceremonies and
rites.
2. Mahavidya:2 The Great Knowledge, the magic of the
Kabalists and the Tantrika
worship, often sorcery of the worst description.
3. Guhya-Vidya:3 Knowledge of the mystic powers residing in
sound; mantras and
hymns, rhythm and melody; also knowledge of the forces of
nature and their
correlation.
4. Atma-Vidya:4 Knowledge of the Soul, called true wisdom by
the Orientalists,
but means much more.
It is the last of these that constitutes the only real
Occultism that a genuine
Theosophist ought to seek after. "All the rest are
based on things pertaining to
the realm of material Nature, however invisible that essence
may be, and however
much it has hitherto eluded the grasp of science."
The article continues:
"Let him aspire to no higher than he feels able to
accomplish. Let him not take
a burden on himself too heavy for him to carry.
Without ever becoming a Mahatma, a Buddha, or a Great Saint,
let him study the
philosophy and the science of the Soul, and he can become
one of the modest
benefactors of humanity, without any superhuman 'powers.'
Siddhis (or the Arhat
powers) are only for those who are able to 'lead the life,'
to comply with the
terrible sacrifices required for such a training, and . . .
to the very letter..151
Let them know at once and remember always that true
Occultism, or Theosophy, is
the 'Great Renunciation of Self,' unconditionally and
absolutely, in thought as
in action. It is Altruism, and it throws him who practices
it out of calculation
of the ranks of the living altogether. 'Not for himself but
for the world he
lives,' as soon as he has pledged himself to the work. Much
is forgiven during
the first years of probation. But no sooner is he accepted
than his personality
must disappear, and he has to become a mere beneficent force
in Nature. There
are two poles for him after that, two paths, and no midward
place of rest. He
has either to ascend laboriously step by step, often through
numerous
incarnations and no Devachanic break, the golden ladder
leading to Mahatmaship,
or-he will let himself slide down the ladder at the first
false step and roll
down into Dugaship."
In another Lucifer article near the same time entitled
"Practical Occultism,"
she defines a Theosophist as follows:
"Any person of average intellectual capacities and a
leaning towards the
metaphysical; of pure unselfish life, who finds more joy in
helping his neighbor
than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to
sacrifice his own
pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth,
Goodness and Wisdom
for their own sake, not for the benefit they may confer-is a
Theosophist.
"It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there
is the slightest tinge of
selfishness remaining in the operator. For unless the
intuition is entirely
unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the
psychic, act on the
astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it. The
powers and forces of
animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and
revengeful, as by the
unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of
spirit lend themselves
only to the perfectly pure in heart-and this is Divine
Magic."
The article proceeds to set forth a list of conditions
requisite for the
practice of the soul science. The necessary conditions are
eleven, taken from a
list of seventy-three which she says are prescribed for
Eastern neophytes. They
are: suitable magnetic conditions of the spot selected (for
meditation);
membership in a company of harmonized students; a mind at
peace and purified; a
sense of unity with all that lives; renunciation of all
vanities; obliteration
of a sense of separateness or superiority; avoidance of
impurely magnetized
contacts; the blunting of the mind to terrestrial
distractions; abstention from
all animal foods, spirits, opium; expression of good will in
thought, speech,
and act; and oblivion of self. These precepts form much of
the basis of
Theosophic cult practice.
The result of such decisive utterances from the leader was
to give pause to the
fast-growing Society membership in its haste to enter upon
the Occult Path.
Enthusiasm was chilled. As the nature of the Master Science
was revealed and its
hardships and scant earthly rewards envisioned, the high
qualities demanded and
the perils depicted frightened many from the deliberate
attempt to enroll as
spiritual candidates. Yet there were aspirants both sincere
and resolute. The
needs of these had to be met, at the same time that the
folly of the rash had to
be rebuked.
To serve both purposes Madame Blavatsky issued many articles
through the pages
of Lucifer in London, from 1888 onward. And along with them
came a booklet of
one hundred and ten small pages which has since taken its
place as one of the
most beautiful expressions of Oriental spirituality now
extant. This was The
Voice of the Silence. The Preface states that it is a
translation of a portion
of the slokas or verses from The Book of the Golden
Precepts, one of the works.152
put into the hands of students in the East.5 She had learned
many of these
Precepts by heart, a fact which made translation a
relatively easy task for her.
The Book of the Golden Precepts formed part of the same
series as that from
which the "Stanzas of Dzyan" were taken, on which
The Secret Doctrine is based.
The Voice of the Silence may be said to be the ethical
corollary of the cosmic
and anthropological teachings of The Secret Doctrine. Its
maxims form part of
the basic system of the Yogacharya school of Mahayana
Buddhism. Of the ninety
distinct little treatises which The Book of the Golden
Precepts contains, Madame
Blavatsky states that she had learned thirty-nine by heart
years before. The
remainder is omitted.
"To translate the rest," says the Preface, "I
should have to resort to notes
scattered among a too large number of papers and memoranda
collected for the
last twenty years and never put in order, to make it by any
means an easy task.
Nor could they be all translated and given to a world too
selfish and too much
attached to objects of sense to be in any way prepared to
receive such exalted
ethics in the right spirit. . . . Therefore it has been
thought better to make a
judicious selection only from those treatises which will
best suit the few real
mystics in this country and which are sure to answer their
needs."
The opening sentence says:
"These instructions are for those ignorant of the
dangers of the lower Iddhi,"
or psychic faculties.
The second page holds two short sentences which have ever
since rung in the ears
of occult students:
"The Mind is the great slayer of the Real. Let the
disciple slay the Slayer."
We must still the restless outgoing mind before we can hope
to see into the
depths of the reality within. We must strive with our
unclean thoughts and
overpower them, or they will dominate us. Our deepest
sympathies must be linked
with all that lives and breathes, we must lend our ears to
every cry of mortal
pain, or we can not hope to merge our consciousness into the
Universal Soul. It
is better to trust the heart than the head, for "even
ignorance is better than
head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide
it." Asceticism is a
Via Dolorosa; it is not by self-torture that the lower self
can be lifted to
union with the higher. Homiletic morality breathes in the
following: "Sow kindly
acts and thou shalt reap their fruition." But stinging
rebuke to negative
righteousness echoes in the next sentence, one that has
assumed large
proportions in Theosophic ethics: "Inaction in a deed
of mercy becomes an action
in a deadly sin." The basis of much Theosophic
morality, as of equanimity and
serenity, is found in this text as well as in its corollary,
which assures us
that no efforts-not the smallest-whether in right or wrong
direction, can vanish
from the world of causes. "If sun thou canst not be,
then be the humble planet"
is our admonition to stay modestly within the sphere of our
capabilities, and
not strain after things unmeet for us. We should humble
ourselves before those
greater than ourselves in wisdom, seek earnestly their
counsel and strive to
tread the high path they have traversed. At the same time we
must not withhold
the blessing of what knowledge we have acquired from the
circle of lesser
evolved souls who may come within our influence. We must be
humble if we would
learn; we will be humbler still when knowledge has begun to
dawn. Reward for
patient striving is held out to all devotees. The holy germs
that took root in
the disciple's soul will expand and send out shoots under
the influence of
steady spiritual zeal; the stalks will wax stronger at each
new trial, they may
bend like reeds, but will never break; and when the time of
harvest comes, they.153
blossom forth. When the persevering soul has crossed the
seventh path "all
nature thrills with joyous awe." But does the
victorious pilgrim then enter
selfishly into the enjoyment of his hard-won guerdon of
bliss, forgetful of his
fellows who have toiled less successfully than he? Is
selfishness justified in
nature? The verses ask, "Can there be bliss when all
that lives must suffer?
Shalt though be saved and hear the whole world cry?"
The answer is the key to
all Theosophic ethic: the Nirmanakaya (literally, the
"possessor of a
transformation-body"), even he, facing his natural
right to enter upon a higher
state of being in the upper cycle where he will be free from
limitation, turns
back to aid the "great orphan humanity." He takes
his place in that high
Brotherhood whose members form a "Guardian Wall"
about mankind. He joins the
Society of the Masters of Compassion who by spiritual
masonry build the wall
"raised by their tortures, by their blood cemented,
protecting him (man) from
further and far greater misery and sorrow." This is the
Great Renunciation of
Self, the mighty sacrifice, itself typical of the cosmic
sacrifice of Deity in
its self-limitation under the cross of matter, and again
typified by every
symbolic sacrificial rite of the religions. But the
universal life can not
restrain a thrill of gladness as the prodigal's long exile
in the worlds of
matter is ended, and he returns to the Father's house. For
"Hark . . . from the
deep unfathomable vortex of that golden light in which the
Victor bathes, all
Nature's wordless voice in thousand tones ariseth to
proclaim: A New Arhan is
Born."
Such is The Voice of the Silence. Its verses ripple on in a
rhythmic cadence
aptly suited to assist the feeling of mystical devotion. Like
other of the
Oriental books it consists of ethico-spiritual maxims, which
hardly so much
attempt to give a systematic exposition of moral principles,
as to reduce the
spiritual essence of these principles to a mantric form
capable of exerting a
magical potency when used ritually. But it is not difficult
to discover in the
book the mainspring of much of that distrust of the purely
psychic which marks
Theosophy so distinctively among the modern cults. To carry
a heart "heavy with
a whole world's woe" is accounted a far more
substantial merit than to bend some
of the etheric and electric forces of nature to one's will.
What The Voice of the Silence aims to do is to strike the
spiritual keynote of
the ancient science of mystic union or Yoga as essentially a
spiritual technique
and not a system of magical practices. It is not at all a
text-book of the great
Yoga philosophy and its art, although it may be said that it
in no way clashes
with the general Oriental teachings on the subject of Yoga.
Madame Blavatsky did
not find it needful to formulate a distinctive technique of
her own for the
cultivation of the great science.
The Theosophical science of Yoga will be found delineated in
three or four books
which, along with The Voice of the Silence, are: the
Bhagavad Gita, Light on the
Path (a small collection of precepts alleged to have been
dictated mystically by
a Master to Mabel Collins in London about 1885), and the
several commentaries on
the Yoga Aphorisms (or Sutras) of Patanjali, written,
according to Vyasa,
perhaps 10,000 B.C., according to scholars, a few centuries
B.C. Portions of the
New Testament, when given esoteric interpretation, are
accepted as descriptive
of Yoga development. Light on the Path is highly
mystico-spiritual in tone, a
companion work to The Voice of the Silence. It is couched in
allegorical and
figurative language, depicting forms of nature as symbolical
of spiritual truth.
The Bhagavad Gita, or Lord's Lay, is a portion of the Mahabharata,
and is by now
so widely disseminated among Western students as to need no
description or
comment in this connection. It enjoys perhaps the place of
foremost popularity
among all the Oriental religious dissertations. But the Yoga
Sutras of Patanjali
come perhaps nearest to being a definite text-book of
Theosophic devotional.154
discipline. It is therefore important to look carefully at
the features of the
physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual regimen
prescribed in this ancient
text for the cultivation of the highest Theosophic virtue.
It is a handbook for the practice of the Science of Yoga.
Yoga, in brief, means
union,6 having specific reference to the eventual merging of
the individual Soul
or Monad into the Universal or World Soul, and in a larger
view the absorption
of all finite souls into the Absolute. Its rules and
injunctions are the natural
outgrowth of a philosophy which holds that man is an
ensemble of several
separate entities or principles, whose harmonious evolution
postulates a cultus
demanding the unification under one central control of the
different
individualities which, till that harmonization is effected,
live together at
odds and cross purposes within the same organism. To mollify
that discordance it
is requisite first of all that man should rise above the
delusion that he is
essentially his body, or his feelings, or even his mind. He
must first learn
through an inner realization that he, in his true Self, is
none of these, but
that he, the real inner man, uses these as his servants. He
must recognize
himself as the divine imperishable Ego, the Jivatma,7 and in
so doing he will
cease to commit the error of identifying himself with those
temporary and
transient aspects of himself which he so long mistook for
his real being. This
orientation of himself from his lower manifestations into
his true plane of
Selfhood will release him from all the pain and distress
that attends his
illusion that he is the impermanent lower self.
This in brief is the general aim of Eastern occult
practices; but its complete
rationale involves an understanding of the details of a
labyrinthine science of
soul unfoldment that in its intricacy staggers the
psychological neophyte in the
West. It is necessary in some degree to go into this
psychological technology
for a better comprehension of the theme.
Its adept devotees in the East tell us that Yoga is no mere
cult, but an exact
and complex science, with precise rules, very definite
stages, and a quite
scientific methodology.
There are several types or forms of Yoga practice, which
must first be
differentiated. The most definite forms are: (1), Karma
Yoga; (2), Bhakti Yoga;
and (3), Raja Yoga. Karma Yoga is the path of active
exertion (Karma meaning
"action"), by which the man at an early stage of
evolution learns to acquire
control of his physical organism and his sense apparatus for
the purposes of an
energetic bodily career in the world. It has been subdivided
into two types,
called Hatha Yoga and Laya Yoga. The first, or
"forceful," gives control over
the physical mechanism of the body; the second, or
"inactive," governs the
emotional or etheric component of man. In this process there
are gradually
brought into active operation the four force centers, wheels
or chakras, which
lie below the diaphragm. Karma Yoga is supposed to have been
employed by the
Lemurian or Third Race people, to enable them to perform
their appropriate
functions in the line of earthly racial evolution. It is not
to be practiced by
us.
Bhakti ("Love") Yoga, the second type, awakens the
heart and throat centers in
the etheric body, which latter is achieved by the exercise
of devotion and
affectional qualities. Love, affection, loyalty, attachment
to personality, are
the powerful stimuli that rouse the centers above the
diaphragm to active
functioning. It is the path of feeling and emotion, using
the astral body. Its
use was credited to the Atlanteans, or Fourth Race folk, as
their most
appropriate type of evolutionary expression, and is no
longer our task..155
Raja ("King") Yoga, type three, is the specific
discipline for our Fifth Race,
the Aryan. It is designed to awaken the centers in the head
(the pineal gland
and the pituitary body) crowning the work of the two earlier
Yogas in the
development of the functions of the etheric body. It is
consequently the path of
mentality, which is the Fifth principle in man; and hence it
becomes the
appointed task of the Fifth or Aryan Race to unfold it. As
the work of Yoga is
to unify the various principles in man into harmonious
accord, it will be seen
that, as Karma Yoga arouses the four lower centers, and
Bhakti Yoga unites them
with the two middle centers (the heart and throat), so it is
the purpose of Raja
Yoga to link the ascending forces with the centers in the
head (the brain and
the two glands mentioned above), and to use this uppermost
station as the
controlling and distributing center for all the energies of
the unified
personality.8 There are many stages in the long process of
Yoga development.
First the physical must be brought under control. Then the
etheric centers must
be quickened and linked with the head centers. Then the mind
must be linked with
the true soul, and eventually the latter with the common
Soul of all things.
According to Mrs. Bailey, Raja Yoga is a system giving the
rules and means
whereby,
1. Conscious contact can be made with the soul, the second
aspect of the Christ
within.
2. Knowledge of the Self can be achieved and its control
over the Not-Self
maintained.
3. The power of the Ego or Soul can be felt in daily life,
and the soul powers
manifested.
4. The lower psychic nature can be subdued and the higher
psychic faculties
developed.
5. The brain can be brought en rapport with the soul and the
messages from the
latter received.
6. The "light in the head" can be increased so
that a man becomes a living
Flame.
7. The Path can be found, and man himself becomes that Path.
The initial work of Raja Yoga is the recognition of the true
nature of the Self
as distinct from the illusory character of man's life in the
three lower worlds-the
difference between the Man himself and his lower vestures.
This is achieved
by a long course of meditation, with thought turned inward,
until one
empirically learns that he is not either his body, or his
feelings, or his
sensations, or even his thoughts; that all these belong to
the world of
evanescent things, and that he himself is the entity, the
point of conscious
being, which abides in unaffected permanence at the center
of this changing
world of experience. This is his first task-to learn to
distinguish that which
comes into being and goes out from that which abides. And
the work involves more
than a merely mental grasp of the fact; it requires that one
should act, feel,
and think, and at the same time learn to stand aside from
the act, the feeling,
the thought, and remain unaffected by them. For ages during
his preceding
evolution, before the scales of illusion were torn from his
eyes, the man was
under the delusion that he was the lower objective self, as
reported by his
senses. This identification of himself with what is in
reality but his outer
clothing, is the cause of all the pain that besets his path.
For this thinking
himself to be the vestures which he wears subjects him to
the vicissitudes which.156
they themselves must undergo. He thus prescribes physical
and sensuous limits to
his destiny. He puts himself at the mercy of the fate which
befalls his outward
life. Before serenity can be achieved he must learn to
detach himself from his
vehicles, so that he can sit unaffected in the midst of
changing fortunes. Ere
long he must realize himself as part of the whole of being,
yet as detached from
it, free from the dominance of the world of form and the
impressions of the
senses. He must learn to use them, and no longer let them
use him. His dominance
over matter is achieved by a mastery of the subtle forces
resident in the atom.
This is done by developing a conscious control over what are
called the Gunas,
the three qualities of matter, which are Sattva, Rajas, and
Tamas; or rhythm,
action or mobility, and inertia. In Indian philosophy,
however, these three
terms mean, rather, "goodness, passion, and
darkness," or "virtue, foulness, and
ignorance." Therefore it is necessary to understand the
theosophic
interpretation of Gunas. Eventually the disciple must be
able to command the
wind and the waves by instituting the proper balance between
the rhythmic and
the inert qualities of matter. Thus he learns to know of a
surety that he is not
those forms but a dynamic entity immeasurably greater than
them. The acquirement
of this knowledge is a part of the process necessary to the
realization of his
true character as a living spirit, and to the gradual
withdrawing of himself
from his entanglement in the world of matter. The five
elements, earth, water,
fire, air, and ether, and the five senses, as well as the
distinctive forms of
mental action, are the specific results of the interplay of
the three Gunas in
the world of material forces. But back of these external
manifestations there
are the "unspecific" or subjective forms of
ethereal force; and eventually the
disciple has to touch these unseen elements and control
them.
To help detach himself from the influence of visible forms,
the seeker must aim
to actualize the unseen force which operates behind every
form, and thus look
through and beyond the form, which is but the effect of some
cause, to that
cause itself. The crucial operation in every Yoga practice
is to work back from
effects, which are material and secondary, to causes, which
are spiritual and
primary; from the material periphery of life in to its
spiritual core. This he
believes possible by virtue of the theory that "the
whole world of forms is the
result of the thought activity of some life; the whole
universe of matter is the
field for the experience of some existence."9
All objective forms are frozen thoughts of some mind, which
gives its own
coloring to both the objective and the subjective worlds
presented to it. Hence,
one of the first things the Ego has to do in seeking Yoga is
to take the mind in
charge and render it a perfect instrument for the Soul's
higher vision. The
central aim of the great discipline of meditation is summed
up in the phrase "to
still the modifications of the thinking principle." The
mind's proper function,
in the Yoga system, is to serve as a sublimated sixth sense,
transcending yet
supplementing all the others. Through persistent practice it
is to be rendered
into a finely poised spiritual sense, to become the organ of
the Soul's
acquisition of the higher knowledge. This is the use for
which it is destined in
the unfolding economy of nature; but it has hitherto failed
to reveal this
purpose because it has not been subjected-in the West-to the
necessary
discipline. In preceding aeons of evolution it subserved
nature's intent by
growing facile and mobile. It displayed the Rajas Guna, or
mobility, to an
advanced degree. But when spirit begins the long process of
retirement from the
thraldom of the form, this quality of the mind becomes more
and more a
hindrance. Its incessant activity must be poised. It must be
brought under the
sway of the Sattva Guna,--rhythm.
Hitherto the mind has been the slave of every lower sense.
This was its proper
service at the Lemurian or Karma Yoga stage. It is so no
longer. It must be made.157
blind and deaf to the insistent cry of the outer world, so
that it may become
prepared to picture forth, like a clear lens, the realities
of an inner world,
whose impressions it was never focused to reflect
heretofore.
As it turns away from the clamorous din of sense contacts,
it finds itself in a
realm, first, where only emotions are left to be dwelt upon.
The material world
shut out, there is nothing but astral or feeling impulses to
absorb its
attention. Next all passional content must be rejected,
leaving only
intellectual material to deal with. At last even abstract
thought must be
stilled, until the mind is utterly emptied of content. It
dwells in pure
abstraction, in a state void of anything concrete. Or it may
take an object,
concrete and substantial, and by a supreme effort,
successful after long trial,
lose sight of its materiality and finally see it as a thing
of pure spiritual
construction. The actual substance of things disappears and
only the noumenal
concept of it is seen. The mind approaches nearer and nearer
to sheer vacuity.
Is Yoga thus to end in a blank of empty abstraction, with
all concreteness gone
from experience?
For a time it may seem so. But suddenly when the persevering
devotee has at last
succeeded in holding the mind calm and still as the placid
surface of a lake,
there ensues an experience of the light that never was on
land or sea. With the
increasing glow of the light there pours down into
consciousness knowledge,
mystic vision, and clear illumination, as the vibratory
energies of the
Augoeides, or Spiritual Soul, flood down into the brain. The
mind now serves as
the luminous pathway between the inner realm of spiritual
light and the physical
brain, and over that bridge the individual human soul may
advance into a direct
knowledge of the interior heart of nature.
"When a man can detach his eyes from all that concerns
the physical, emotional
and mental, and will raise his eye and direct them away from
himself, he will
become aware of 'the overshadowing cloud of spiritual
knowledge,' or the
'raincloud of knowable things.'"
The human soul empties itself of earthly content, in order
that it may be filled
with heavenly light and wisdom.
The perfecting of the mind as a sublimated sense instrument
thus enables the
Seer to do three important things:
1. To see the world of spiritual causation, as the eye sees
the physical world.
2. To interpret that causal world in terms of the intellect.
3. To transmit this high knowledge to the physical brain.
The advance to this superior consciousness is made through
the gateway of a
number of Initiations, or specific stages in the expansion
of conscious
capacity. The training requisite to unify the soul with its
organism constitutes
the first stage called the Probationary Path. Stage two
brings one to the Third
Initiation, when the union of the mind with the Ego on his
own plane is
completed. The third stage accomplishes the union of the
whole lower personality
with the Monad, and covers the final steps on the Path of
Initiation.
These stages of the Path are further symbolized in the
literature of occultism
by three halls through which man passes as he ascends: the
Hall of Ignorance;
the Hall of Learning; and the Hall of Wisdom. While he is in
the realm of purely
human life and identified with the phenomenal world, he is
said to be in the.158
Hall of Ignorance. The termination of his residence there
brings him to the
entrance to the Probationary Path. He then enters the Hall
of Learning, wherein
he follows the path of discipleship and instruction. This is
the Mystic Life. At
its end he passes by another initiation into the Occult Life
and dwells within
the Hall of Wisdom. Here he attains realization, undergoes
heightened expansion
of his consciousness, and identifies himself with the
spiritual essence of his
being.
The central features of occult discipline from the
standpoint of the novitiate
is the oft-mentioned "stilling of the senses and the
mind." In the Bhagavad Gita
Arjuna, the disciple, remonstrates with Krishna, the Lord,
that he can not
accept the Yoga teaching as to the steadfastness of the
controlled mind. It is
hard to tame he says, as the prancing horse or the fitful
wind. Krishna answers:
"Well sayest thou, O Prince, that the mind is restless
and as difficult to
restrain as the winds. Yet by constant practice, discipline
and care may it be
mastered. . . . The Soul, when it has recognized the
master-touch of the real
Self, may attain unto true Yoga by care and patience,
coupled with firm
resolution and determination."
A little later he adds:
"Close tightly those gates of the body which men call
the avenues of the senses.
Concentrate thy mind upon thine inner self. Let thine 'I'
dwell in full strength
within its abode, not seeking to move outward. . . . He who
thinketh constantly
and fixedly on Me, O Prince, letting not his mind ever stray
toward another
object, will be able to find Me without overmuch
trouble,--yea, he will find Me,
will that devoted one."
There is a law of esotericism which governs the operation of
all these psychic
forces in mind and body. It is likewise the guarantee of the
Soul's ultimate
hegemony among the principles making up man's life. It is
the occult law that
"energy follows thought." It was this law which
brought the universe into
existence out of the Unmanifest; it is this law by which man
has himself
fashioned the instruments for his objective expression on
the outer planes in
the lower worlds. He, like the macrocosmic Logos before him,
sent forth thought-waves,
which, vibrating and impacting upon cosmic matter, moulded
it to forms
commensurate with the type of their activity. Thus he has
built his own
universe, which, however, binds him while it gives him
expression. Now the same
law must, in reverse motion, so to say, be utilized to
release him from the
trammels of flesh and sense, of feeling and mind-wandering.
With energy flowing
in the grooves marked by thought, he must cease to send
thought outward to the
periphery of life, the material world. Essentially a psychic
being, he must
concern himself not with things but with psychic states. He
must withdraw his
attention from sense contacts, whether pleasurable or
painful, and end his
subjection to the pairs of opposites, joy and sorrow,
delight and anguish. He
must cease to set his affections on things of desire; he
must restrain wayward
streams of thought. Refusing to direct further energies outward
to these
spheres, he invokes the law to terminate his further
creations of form that will
bind him to the world of the Not-Self.
The mind-stuff is susceptible to vibrations both from the
lower bodies and from
the Soul above. Man's destiny is in his own hands; it is
daily decreed by the
direction in which he turns his mind. As a man changes the
nature and direction
of his desires he changes himself..159
Mind-control is acquired through two lines of endeavor: tireless
effort and non-attachment.
The first requirement explains why the Yoga student must be
virtually a religious devotee. From no other source than
religious devotion to
the Way of Attainment can the necessary persistence spring
to carry the
candidate through to eventual success. The second
prerequisite, non-attachment,
is often spoken of as "renunciation of the fruits of
action." It signifies that
attitude toward things and toward the life of the
personality which enables the
Soul or Ego to regard the events that touch these with a
sense of equanimity or
nonchalance. It is the sublimation of Stoic ataraxia, and is
called vairagya in
Sanskrit. Our term indifference does not convey the correct
significance of the
concept. It connotes a combination of positive and negative
attitudes
practically unknown to the West. Krishna explains to Arjuna
the seeming paradox
in his injunction to service through action, which is
coupled with a similar
abjuration to ignore the fruits of action. The devotee is
enjoined to perform
right action for the sake of dharma, or duty, as the West
has it, but at the
same time to renounce the fruits of the action. In our
vernacular this would
mean to act with the zeal born of an interesting objective,
but to leave the
results with God. If one binds himself to the fruits of his
actions, he creates
ever new Karma for future expiation. He must act, and act
resolutely; yet
without thought of reward. Says the Bhagavad Gita:
"The wise man, setting himself free, mentally, from
actions and their results,
dwelleth in the Temple of the Spirit, even that which men
call the body, resting
calmly therein, at peace, and neither desiring to act nor
causing to act, and
yet always willing to play well his part in action, when
Duty calleth him."10
Krishna clarifies the contradictory demands of duty and
renunciation in the
following:
". . . he who performeth honorably and to the best of
his ability, such Action
as may appear to him to be plain and righteous Duty,
remembering always that he
has nought to do with the reward or fruits of the Action, is
both a Renouncer of
Action, and also a Performer of the Service of Right Action.
More truly is he an
Ascetic and Renouncer than he who merely refuses to perform
Actions; for the one
hath the spirit of the doctrine, while the other hath
grasped merely the empty
shell of form and letter. Know thou such Intelligent Right
Action as
Renunciation; and also that the best of Right Action without
Intelligent
understanding of the renunciation of results is not Right Action
at all."11
On the road to Seership, the aspirant advances by two
stages. First there is the
long Path of Probation; later the Path of Discipleship. He
passes over many
steps, commencing with the aspiration, entering upon
Discipline, leading to
Purification, followed by Initiation, Realization, and final
union with the
Over-soul. There are said to be seven major modifications of
the thinking
principle, or seven states of consciousness, as follows:
desire for knowledge;
desire for freedom; desire for happiness; desire to perform
duty; sorrow; fear;
and doubt. These seven basic yearnings severally reach their
fulfillment as
illumination ensues upon strenuous effort. These are called
the seven stages of
bliss, or the seven stations on the Way of the Cross.
The practice of Yoga involves the employment of what are
known as the Eight
Means. These are:
1. Yama: self-control, restraint; it relates to the
disciple's contacts with
others and with the outside world..160
2. Nyana: right observances; the keeping of the Five
Commandments and the Five
Rules.
The Five Commandments are:
(a) Harmlessness: the aspirant must use the physical forces
in the spirit of
beneficence to all that lives. He hurts no thing.
(b) Truth: precise and straightforward speech, expressing
inward truth. The
voice must have lost the power to injure.
(c) Abstention from theft: rendering each his due; not using
more than one's
share; making one's maintenance cost no more than is right;
not taking what
others need.
(d) Abstention from incontinence: control of the relation
between the sexes;
unloosing of the Soul from too strong attachment to any
physical or sense
expression.
(e) Abstention from avarice: covetousness is theft on the
mental plane.
The Five Rules enjoin:
(a) Magnetic purity: internal and external purity of the
three bodies;
unhindered flow of Prana through the system.
(b) Contentment: mind at rest; not a state of inertia, but
one of poise and
balance of energies.
(c) Fiery aspiration: a sine qua non before a disciple is
accepted. Zeal to win
through is a primary qualification.
(d) Spiritual reading: power to discern things in their
spiritual, not physical,
aspects; inner vision.
(e) Devotion to Ishvara: consecration of the lower man to
the service of the
higher. Devotion to God, or the Divine Spark within us.
3. Asana: right poise; correct physical, emotional and
mental attitudes. It
coφrdinates the three principles of the lower man into a
perfect instrument.
4. Pranayama: breath control; control of the subtle energies
of the inner
sheaths; leads to organization of the etheric or vital body.
5. Pratyahara: abstraction; withdrawal of the Soul from the
interests of the
outer life.
6. Dharana: concentration; fixation of the mind; leads to
coordination of the
mind as the sixth sense of the Soul.
7. Dhyana: meditation; development of the capability of the
Soul to transmit to
the brain its higher ideas.
8. Samadhi: contemplation; dwelling consciously upon the
"things of God"; leads
to full illumination. It is the final stage of mystic
vision, when the
individual Ego looks upon the full splendor of the spiritual
universe..161
As the purification of the three lower vehicles proceeds,
certain physical
changes are said to occur within the head, following the
awakening of the "lotus
centers" below. "The vital airs" are
organized to flow in regular currents up
and down the two channels in the spinal cord; they rise to
the head, circulate
around the temples and pass inward to touch and arouse to
active functioning the
pineal gland and the pituitary body, located close to each
other near the center
of the cranium. This is the Kundalini or Serpent Fire,
typified in may
symbolisms of the ancients. Its play of force fills the
whole body with light.
It is so high-powered a current of etheric energy that its
stirring to activity
is attended with much danger, and, Theosophists say, should
only be undertaken
with the help of a Master.
No bizarre style of ascetic living is demanded of a Yogi.
"Celibacy is not
enjoined. Self-control is." If we may use Mrs. Bailey's
words once more,
"The right use of the sex principle, along with entire
conformity to the law of
the land, is characteristic of every true aspirant."12
The basic principle of personal conduct is subsumed under
the one rule: "Let
every man attend to his own Dharma." The meddler, the
reformer, the uplifter is
looked upon askance in the Orient. The individual's kingdom
to conquer is
within. When he becomes master there he will be given larger
worlds to subdue to
law and harmony.
An interesting development at a later stage is the Yogi's
increasing power to
create on the mental plane by the use of the word or of
sounds. He becomes a
magician-a white one if his motive is pure and selfless.
This power is achieved
through continence, pure living, and clean thinking, and not
through any
perversions of the occult, such as sex magic, as emphasized
by some so-called
schools of occultism. The latter are on the black path,
which does not lead to
the portals of initiation.
There are four types of purity to be achieved, one for each
vehicle: external
(for the physical body); magnetic (of the etheric body);
psychic (of the astral
body); and mental (of the mental body). All kinds require
refinement of the
matter of which each body is composed. The law of
synchronous and asynchronous
vibrations attends to this, pure thoughts sifting out
coarser particles from the
bodies and building in finer ones. This is what is meant by
burning out the
dross.
Mrs. Bailey tells us that
"in this cycle the interest of the hierarchy is being
largely centered on the
question of psychic purity, and this is the reason for the
trend of the occult
teaching at present developing. It is away from what is
commonly understood as
psychic development, lays no emphasis on the lower psychic
powers and seeks to
train the aspirant in the laws of the spiritual
life."13
"The pure heart shall see God,"-who is the higher
inner principle which suddenly
manifests itself to the open-visioned seeker.
It is most necessary-Mrs. Bailey agrees with Madame
Blavatsky-that students
should follow the means of Yoga in the order laid down by
Patanjali, and should
thence see to it that the purificatory process, the
discipline of the inner and
the outer life, and one-pointedness of mind, should be
undertaken prior to
attempting the regulation of the etheric principle through
breathing. The
premature awakening of the centers is attended with positive
danger, as before.162
noted. The natural barriers between this world and the
astral may be broken down
before the pupil is ready to deal with the forces thus
released. The untimely
development of the lower psychism is regarded as the cause
of insanity in many
cases.
One must be a mystic before he becomes an occultist. The
mystic rises to God
through the path of feeling; the occultist through the path
of knowledge. Each
person must become both, but more fittingly the mystic
first.
The eight final siddhis or powers are given as:
1. Minuteness: the ability to enter the infinitely small,
the atom.
2. Magnitude: ability to expand the vision to embrace the
cosmos.
3. Gravity: the ability to use the law of gravity.
4. Lightness: power to counteract gravity, and cause
levitation.
5. Attainment of one's objective: the ability to gain one's
purpose.
6. Irresistible will: sovereignty over the forces of nature.
7. Creative power: art of combining and recombining the
elements.
8. Power to command: power of the word to organize matter
into form.
At this stage we are at last dowered with some of the powers
of gods. For "God
meditated, visualized, spoke, and the worlds were
made," and when our Christ
principle is awakened to full functioning we become joint
heirs of his power. At
the final stage knowledge becomes possible even without the
use of the senses,
though these have themselves been refined to ethereal
sensitivity and continue
to serve the Ego in various capacities.
In the end spirit is victor over matter, because the long
struggle eventuates in
three attainments, described as:
1. The inability of matter and form to hold the Yogi
confined.
2. The powerlessness of substance to prevent the Yogi
cognizing any aspect of
life he desires.
3. The helplessness of matter to withstand the will of the
Yogi.
Freedom from the limitations of matter forms the basis of
all white magic.
Through his transcendent powers the Yogi now transforms the
very vehicles into
instruments of more expanded efficiency. The Soul and its
vehicles now form a
unit, and the Son of God can function unrestrictedly on
earth, on any plane. The
human Ego has become what he was all along, but had not
demonstrated till now,--
a God. His life is now hid with the Christos in the bosom of
God, and for him
humanity is transcended, and he needs no further rebirth as
a mortal. The Spirit
has then transcended space and time. Matter can no longer
imprison him. He
dwells consciously in the timeless Now.
A beautiful passage in the Bhagavad Gita may fittingly summarize
this entire
regimen of Yoga, which is the ideal of the
Theosophist:14.163
"Having purified his mind and cleared his
understanding; having mastered his
personal self by firm resolution and having forsaken the
objects of sense;
having delivered himself from desire, dislike and passion;
worshipping with
intelligent discretion and understanding; eating with
moderation and temperance;
with controlled speech, body and mind; being well practiced
in meditation and
concentration; being dispassionate; having freed himself
from ostentation,
egotism, tyranny, vain-glory, lust, anger, avarice,
covetousness and
selfishness-possessing calmness and peace amidst the
feverish unrest of the
world around him-such a man is fitted to enter into the
consciousness of the
Universal Life."
How naturally unfitted Occidentals are to undertake the
rigid discipline is
evidenced by Madame Blavatsky's statement that hardly half a
dozen of her
followers faced any fair prospects of success in mastering
the difficulties of
the thorny path. Her own warming words disillusioned those
whose hopeful and
enthusiastic efforts had not already reaped for them a
harvest of barren result.
Leading the occult life was seen not to be at all the
sensational and
spectacular road to a magical victory. On the contrary it
presented rather a
drab and dreary prospect.
Thus while the life of a Yogi is the ultimate Theosophic
ideal, the accepted
code of morality and devotion, like many another body of
ideal teaching, it is
seldom actualized in performance. It is too intense for the
average sincere
person in the West. And perhaps, too, its practice and
exemplification would
mark the practitioner as eccentric.
The outcome of this disparity between goal and achievement
is that the cult
practice of Theosophy has become a sort of compromise; and
the "life Theosophic"
may be said to have been reduced for the rank and file of
the membership to one
or other, or all, of the following lines of endeavor: (1),
the performance of
one's dharma; (2), living the life of brotherhood; (3),
practicing meditation;
(4) dietary regulation; (5), a general effort to progress by
reading, study, and
service, to grow by enlarging the knowledge of life.
This menu is interesting as affording concrete demonstration
of just how far the
cult of Oriental subjectivism can be carried out in real
life by a large segment
of sincere and intelligent persons in our Western milieu.
Many Theosophic students at one time or another have
seriously contemplated
attacking the whole problem of spiritual attainment with all
its obligations.
But for the greater part they have elected the winding, if
longer, road up the
mountain, rather than challenge the rigors and the perils of
the straight steep
path. The latter course entails the "challenging of
one's entire block of past
evil Karma"; one undertakes to climb to the Mount of
Transfiguration carrying
the whole bundle of one's former wrongdoing. It is the
testimony of hundreds of
Theosophic idealists that their first virginal enthusiasm for
a trial of the
higher life of renunciation has in reality operated upon
them in this way, so
that they have been disposed by the severity of their
experience to relinquish
the harder method and be content with more gradual progress.
Yet in truth the compromise is regarded more as the
consequence of want of
resolute purpose than as a necessity occasioned by untoward
circumstances. The
claim is made that quiet and leisure are by no means
indispensable conditions of
success; that one can as well cultivate the fruits of the
spirit amid the noise
of modern life as in sequestered solitudes. The voice of the
silence can be
detected and heeded above the roar of traffic. The
asceticisms which the Buddha
decried are in no wise essential to the conquest of the inner
nature. It is not.164
outward circumstance but inner resolution that determines
achievement or
failure.
The five specified forms of leading the life of Theosophic
culture may now be
touched upon. The first one is the performance of one's
dharma, one of the
several translations of which is our "duty." For
many Theosophists this covers
their entire practice of occultism. Dharma is not quite the
same thing as Karma,
but it is taken to mean the obligations and duties incumbent
upon one by virtue
of one's karmic situation. It is equivalent to the Right
Action spoken of by
Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. It is the performance of our
duty in that
particular place, time, and circumstance in which our lot is
cast.
It has often been objected against Theosophic belief in
reincarnation that its
influence would be to narcotize earthly ambition and effort.
On the
presupposition that many more lives are to come, endeavor
will be less
strenuous, it is argued. But no Theosophist would concede
the validity of this
reasoning. He will contend that the effect of his philosophy
is to energize his
activities. A definite amount of work has to be done, and
the sooner the better.
Further, evolution couples its own peculiar penalties to
wasted opportunity.
Therefore the Theosophist will strive to be diligent in
business and fervent in
spirit, he will not be thrown off his balance by the urge to
feverish haste
which the one-life theory may engender. From his vastly
extended perspective he
may derive that calmness which comes from living in the
spirit of eternity
instead of in that of the temporal flux. An event which
perturbs the mind of
another as being absolute good or ill, is accepted by him in
an equable mood, as
it is seen to be but temporary and relative.
Contributing to his attitude of mental poise also is the
doctrine that each
fling of adverse fortune is the final rendering of some
particular account, the
last payment on some old claim, which, if borne with some
patience, will soon be
scratched off his slate. Physical ills are regarded as the
eventual outcropping
of spiritual faults on the material plane; they are
therefore on their way out.
Each stroke of ill is thought of as one more debt paid off.
The debtor rejoices
that he is thus one step nearer freedom.
To keep striving in the line of regular duty under every
stress and strain is
therefore a primary virtue. It makes Theosophists good,
loyal, and dependable
citizens of the state. Their native membership in any
particular society is
looked upon as entailing certain obligations laid upon them
by the hand of
Karma.
Along with racial, national, and professional dharma there
is that other,
especially sacred to the Theosophist, the family dharma. The
relation of
helpfulness in the family weighs with considerable impressiveness
upon
Theosophists. This function may be assumed from necessity,
from the bare force
of the idea of dharma, or from the belief that it may pay
exceptional rewards
for meritorious service to humanity.
The tenets of Theosophy likewise dispose their practitioners
to the happy
procedure of minding their own business, in the main. The
Bhagavad Gita is
insistent that one's dharma, insignificant as it may seem,
is energy
productively expended, while the effort to perform that
dharma of another is a
fruitless waste. Theosophy believes that charity begins at
home, and "know
thyself" is the main call to duty. To render oneself
whole and lovely is the
finest-ultimately the only-service one can do for the world.
The world can ask
no more from you than this, and to it you should devote
yourself chiefly, using.165
social contacts as in part the means of growth. "One's
own dharma is good; the
dharma of another is bad"-for you.
But humanity forms a brotherhood and the relation entails
upon the Theosophist-who
proclaims it as his central theme and only creedal
requirement-a distinctive
course of behavior toward his fellowmen. As Theosophy is an
effort at scientific
altruism, the conduct of members must involve no element
that either positively
harms, or, negatively, withholds good from a fellow mortal.
"Do not hurt to any
creature,"-this to insure peace and safety and good
will as the basic condition
of fraternity among mankind. Harmlessness is one of the Five
Commandments, as we
have seen. Abstinence from theft is another; and this is a
further-reaching
prohibition than it may seem at first sight. It means that
one should not take
from the common store more than one needs, lest another
suffer privation. This
places a ban on all ostentation, luxury, extravagance, which
is living at the
expense of others' labor.15
And herein is seen a most important aspect of Theosophic
morality, one that sets
a sharp contrast between the cult and others that have fed
on its fundamental
occult principles. There is in Theosophy an absence of that
preachment
concerning the "demonstration of prosperity,"
success, material well-being,
which has been the bait held out by so many cults especially
in America.
Theosophists are taught that service to one's fellows, and
not demonstrations of
superiority over them, or ability to tax their labors, is
the truest
demonstration of godly power and the most direct way to put
one's shoulder to
evolution's wheel. To demonstrate prosperity is but to demonstrate
selfishness,
unless prosperity is rigidly made utilitarian to
brotherhood. The cults in
question regard Theosophy as partaking too strongly of
Oriental non-aggressiveness
in these respects, and they have attempted to supply to
Eastern
occultism the desirable quality of Yankee thrift, which the
originators of the
science were so thoughtless as to leave out. But Theosophy,
with Ruskin, affirms
that true spirituality demands neither your prosperity nor
your poverty, is not
signalized by either, but may utilize either or both for its
ends. On the whole
the possession of spirituality has been marked throughout
history by
demonstrations of poverty rather than by a parade of
material wealth. Though
there is no necessary relation of cause and effect between
the two, poverty has
probably engendered more spirituality than has success.
Prosperity is no
criterion of success, and may be the road to spiritual ruin.
A man may gain the
world and lose his soul. So Theosophy is no party to the
"how to get what you
want" ballyhoo, and is so loyal to the true spiritual
ideal of service that it
does not hesitate to characterize New Thought, Christian
Science, Unity, Applied
Psychology, and the others as forms of sorcery, and gray, if
not quite black,
magic.
Much the same considerations restrain occultists from
rushing into the healing
cults, which have added therapy to the lure of
"prosperity." Theosophy has
paused long enough to reflect that there may be ethical
factors in the matter of
healing. It is inclined to feel that there is a breach of
both natural and moral
law in the use of spiritual energies to heal bodily
diseases. If one is ill as
the result of intemperance in living, eating, or as a
consequence of wrong
thinking, the disturbance is to be remedied by a
rectification of ill-advised
habits, not by resort to spiritual affirmation. Human
welfare is to be achieved
and promoted by obedience to the laws of life on all planes,
not by jugglery of
so-called spiritual forces. To use spiritual power as a means
of escaping the
penalties of violated physical laws is a perversion of high
energies to base
ends. Furthermore, it is a deduction from the technology of
life on the several
planes that a physical ill is the working out on the
physical level of causes
engendered on the inner planes, and that if ceremonial, or
theurgical, or.166
psychological powers are invoked to prevent its full
deploying into the realm of
the body on its way out to a final dispersion of its
energies, it will be driven
back into the inner bodies, only to emerge at some favorable
time in the future
with more pain than now. Mental healing but drowns the
symptoms, which are the
effects, and does not cause or prevent its discovery.
Theosophists tell us that
there are infinitely deeper laws governing the processes of
healing than either
materia medica or cult therapy dreams of, and it is foolish
for uninstructed
zealots to rush into this field. The program of Theosophy in
the face of the
blatant cry for healing directed at every sect and cult, is
to learn the basic
laws of life, on all planes. Obedience to them will obviate
the necessity for
the special intervention of exceptional forces. Moreover,
disease is needed by
nature as a means to apprise us of our errors, and hence to
enlighten our
ignorance. Were it not for pain we could not grow in
knowledge. It is more
important that the laws of life be mastered than that some
pains be removed.
Likewise not even happiness is made the criterion of
Theosophical ethical
idealism. Mankind has the right to happiness, to be sure,
since Ananda (bliss)
is the ultimate nature of the All. In the end, the abundant
life, with happiness
as its concomitant, will be the fruit of effort, and one of
the marks of
attainment. But in the present status of evolution,
happiness is for the most
part only tentative, or epiphenomenal, as transient as pain.
Then, too, pain if
often likely to be a more certain guide to progress than is
joy. The primary
task is to master the laws of life; and the processes of
learning may not be the
happiest experience. Dharma overshadows mere happiness.
Those Theosophists, then, who lay stress upon the dharmic
aspect of ethical
teaching may be said to live their faith through the
practice of a sort of Karma
Yoga. They follow neither the path of mysticism nor those of
occultism and
devotion in their purely psychological phases. They seek to
build character
through right action and to reach the inner kingdom through
"meritorious deeds."
They live Theosophy in conduct rather than in thinking.
A second type of occult practice is that which grows out of
the emphasis laid
upon the principle of Brotherhood.
One of the first and most striking forms in which this
spirit emerges into
practical conduct is the control of speech in the avoidance
of gossip. New
students of Theosophy have often been surprised at the
emphasis laid in the
ethical literature of the cult on the primary importance of
this item of
behavior. It is therein regarded as one of the most direct
forms of sin against
the law of love, the law of brotherhood, since the victim is
not present to
defend himself. It is the subterfuge of weakness and
baseness. It foments
discord and strife.
It is but the simplest sort of homiletic wisdom to realize
that the exercise of
brotherhood demands the obliteration of such harsh and gross
emotions as anger,
hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, avarice, brutality. They all
spring from "the
heresy of separateness" and feed on the sense of self
as isolated from the
common weal.
But perhaps the highest virtue in the way of human
solidarity in the occultist's
catalogue is that of tolerance. Theosophists are asked to
exemplify tolerance
because it is a prima facie fundamentum of any scheme of
social friendliness
whatever.
Esoterically the Theosophical Society was organized to form
a nucleus of
Universal Brotherhood, to bring under a common stimulus a
group of men and women.167
who should endeavor to manifest perfect unity on the basis
of that one
principle, who should constitute a node of spiritual force
giving vitality to
the evolution of the unified racial consciousness. Tolerance
was the
indispensable element in this enterprise.
The third road to Yoga followed by many in the movement is
that of meditation.
The degree of its actual employment by members of the
Society is a variable
quantity. Meditation was a requirement of the discipline in
the Esoteric Section
to the minimum extent of fifteen minutes a day. But outside
that section few
students held themselves to any set schedule. Its practice
is intermittent and
irregular, when undertaken at all. Avid beginners often bind
themselves to a
course of daily meditation, with fair results. But the task
seems in most cases
to prove irksome or to be attended with unsatisfactory
consequences of one kind
or another. It many cases it is eventually given up. The
influences militating
against its fruitful continuance are not entirely clear.
Whether the pressure of
the actual in our Western life is too heavy for steady
progress in the art, or
whether our nervous systems are not sufficiently receptive
of the forces which
would take us deeper into the core of consciousness, we are
unable to determine.
This systematic character of spiritual exercise under a
technique that has the
sanction of hoary antiquity is one of the features of
Theosophy that commends it
to earnest folk in contrast with the loose indefinite
procedure of most
Christian practice. The occult system provides a regimen of
definite discipline,
with the promise of growth in the conscious spiritualization
of life. It does
not leave one in the atmosphere of a vague idealism, but
furnishes the formula
of an exact science. Certain definite results are promised,
in the event of
sustained effort.
Most Theosophic meditation consists in concentrating upon a
certain virtue of a
lofty nature that the student desires to embody in his
character. Working upon
the theory that "a man becomes that upon which he
thinks," he labors to implant
new elements into his personality by the steady
contemplation of desirable
qualities. The keynote of the whole process is
concentration. To focus
consciousness in a steady stream upon one item of knowledge
or one phase of
virtue is tremendously to enhance the mental product. The
effort of mind and
will is supplemented here by the law of automatism, brought
into operation by
repetition. It is a variant of the old law of habit
formation, and is regarded
by the occultists as the only direct method of soul-culture
that can be
consciously applied, with safety, by the individual.
The objects of contemplation may vary from those which are
concrete to those
which are personal, or intellectual, or abstract. One may
think of virtue as
impersonal or as personally embodied. It is an aid in the
earlier stages to
visualize virtue, beauty, nobility, wisdom, truth as
exemplified in some strong
character. But eventually the aim is to absorb the spirit of
those qualities in
their pure or impersonal form. As Adeptship is reached and
some of the loftier
ranges of spirituality are attained, meditation tends to
empty the mind of all
content, whether intellectual or rhapsodic, and to bring
into consciousness the
cognition of sheer pure Being itself.
The fourth avenue of occult progress leads through a rιgime
of bodily
purification by means of diet. It grows out of the
recognition of the relation
between body and spirit, between the indwelling life and its
various sheaths.
Hence progress in the occult life is held to be materially
conditioned by the
dietary rιgime one follows..168
The occultist is concerned with his food, then, with
reference to its purity and
its magnetic qualities, in addition to its general agency in
sustaining life. It
is a question of kind and quality first, and secondly of
quantity. Theosophists
long ago talked of the magnetic properties of foods. Certain
ones tended to make
one sluggish, as they contained heavier earthy elements.
Others built coarse and
sensuous fibre into the tissue and blood. Others heightened
nervous instability.
Some coarsened, others refined, the body. As the bodies of
animals were attached
to undeveloped intelligences, and were in the first place
organized by the far
slower vibrations of the soul of the beast, their edible
flesh was indubitably
permeated with the elemental constituents of sensuality and
bestiality. To
partake of it would be to introduce an inherent disposition
to animal coarseness
into the human vehicle, which would thus give freer course
to the sensual
impulses. The elemental qualities of the animal cells would
stimulate the lower
energies of the astral body. Meat would be a force retarding
evolution, holding
the man closer to the animal characteristics, which it is
his task now to
transcend. Hence it became catalogued as a definite enemy of
the higher life,
and was taboo.
Very many Theosophists have discarded it utterly from their
diet for periods
ranging from months to a score of years. Many have abandoned
its use in their
homes, but indulge when eating with others who use it.
Thousands partake of it
only in the most sparing degree. There are few who have not
cut into their
consumption of it drastically. Its total abandonment was
once an obligatory
requirement in certain degrees of the Esoteric Section. But
members are under no
compulsion in the matter. If the student eats no meat it is
his own voluntary
action, though it may have been determined by the suggestion
of some one
regarded as a leader. Some of these utterances have gone so
far as to declare
that spiritual progress beyond a certain point was
impossible if one ate meat.
Mr. C. W. Leadbeater listed eggs as hardly less detrimental.
Vegetable foods, fruits, nuts, plants, are regarded as best
adapted for human
use, as being most Sattvic in quality. But it is a mistake
to classify
Theosophists generally as vegetarians. Few in fact are. Most
of them have
eliminated meat in all forms, but such animal product foods
as milk, cheese,
eggs, butter, lard, still figure in the diet. With large
numbers of Theosophists
strict adherence to a non-meat rιgime is tempered by the
countervailing
influence of that other precept of good occult behavior,
which says that any
conduct becomes discordant with the brotherhood platform if
it makes of one a
spectacle of eccentricity. To render oneself
"queer" in the eyes of others is
largely to defeat one's usefulness in the rτle of a promoter
of human
solidarity. So it is often regarded as better to eat meat
than to bring
occultism into disrepute as an oddity.
It is quite well to reiterate, before dismissing this topic,
that there is no
prescribed regimen of life for Theosophists, and that many
of the peculiarities
of dietary habit observed here and there-and hardly more
patently among
Theosophists than among members of other sects-are to be
assigned largely to
individual whims.
There remains the last of our subdivisions of cult
activity,--the constant
effort to progress in the line of occult knowledge and wisdom.
It is perhaps too
broad an aim to be thus particularized, but it embraces the
main currents in the
drift of the average Theosophic life. Chiefly it consists in
the steady endeavor
to learn more of the occult version of life by continuous
reading and study. It
is primarily an intellectual enterprise. Its
instrumentalities are study
classes, addresses, magazines, and books, with the recent
addition of.169
correspondence courses. Originally captivated by the large
cosmic graph which
the system outlines, the disciple sets himself sedulously to
the great task of
mastering the complexities of the vast science. A few years
will not complete
it. It is the intellectual attempt to square oneself with
the universe and with
life by means of the rationale which the elaborate scheme of
Theosophic ideology
unfolds. This entails for the earnest student ever more
reading, more study,
more reflection. Then as the outlines are grasped and the
basic doctrines
assimilated into the thinking, there follows the serious
problem of making a
readjustment of both theoretical and practical attitudes
toward a world that is
now differently rationalized. The first practical outcome of
the study of so
large a cosmic picture is a certain relaxation of life
strain, with the
acquisition of poise, steadiness, patience, and eventually
tolerance, all framed
against a background of non-attachment. The long vista of an
infinite evolution
to higher states, replaced the hurry and flurry of a
one-life conception, tends
to ground the life firmly in complacency. There is a decided
approach to
philosophic calm. From the assurance of the general
beneficence of the
evolutionary plan there arises a broader charity, a
pervading kindliness and
deep psychic sympathy, all of which dispose to equanimity.
There is a brief statement of the general aim and spirit of
Theosophy that has
been used for years by Lodges of the Society printed on
leaflets for the benefit
of inquirers. It might well have served as the text for this
analysis.
"The Theosophical Society is composed of students,
belonging to any religion in
the world or to none, who are united in their approval of
the three objects
(brotherhood, psychism and eclecticism) by their wish to
remove religious
antagonisms and to draw together men of good will whatsoever
their religious
opinions, and by their desire to study religious truths and
to share the results
of their studies with others. Their bond of union is not the
profession of a
common belief, but a common search and aspiration for truth.
They hold that any
truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity of
life, by devotion
to high ideals, and they regard truth as a prize to be
striven for, not as a
dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that belief
should be the result
of individual study or intuition, and not its antecedent,
and should rest on
knowledge, not on assertion. They extend tolerance to all,
even to the
intolerant, not as a privilege they bestow, but as a duty they
perform, and they
seek to remove ignorance, not to punish it. They see every
religion as an
expression of the Divine Wisdom, and prefer its study to its
condemnation, and
its practice to its proselytism. Peace is their watchword as
truth is their
aim."
Perhaps no one has translated the ethics of this philosophy
into its practical
expressions better than has Madame Blavatsky herself. Her
digest of Theosophic
morality, highly treasured by her followers, is given in the
little work of hers
entitled Practical Occultism:
"A clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager
intellect, an unveiled
spiritual perception, a brotherliness for all, a readiness
to give and receive
advice and instruction, a courageous endurance of personal
injustice, a brave
declaration of principles, a valiant defence of those who
are unjustly attacked,
a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and
perfection which the sacred
science depicts-these are the golden stairs up the steps of
which the learner
must climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom.".170
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XII
LATER THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY
While Madame Blavatsky in Europe was explaining the cosmos
and acquainting
mankind with its own origin, nature, and destiny, Theosophic
affairs in America
were moving forward under the steady guidance of Mr. Judge;
but there was also a
series of disturbances which culminated in the "Sun
Libel Suit" in 1890.1 This
latter event had its remote beginnings in a situation
arising out of the
question of the inspired authorship of Light on the Path,
The Idyll of the White
Lotus, The Blossom and the Fruit, and Through the Gates of
Gold, four small
volumes given out by Miss Mabel Collins in England after
1884. Miss Collins had
herself declared them dictated to her by a mysterious
Master, though later she
said that she had merely "written them down" from
their astral inscription on a
wall in the mystical "Hall of Learning" described
in one of the four books.
Aspiring eagerly for leadership in the Theosophical Society
in America at the
time was Prof. Elliott F. Coues, a man of talent and
ability, somewhat versed in
the field of science and anthropology, who had been led
through his interest in
psychic phenomena to affiliate with the Theosophical
Society. He seems to have
resented Mr. Judge's preferment over him in the esoteric
counsels and leadership
and urged himself upon Madame Blavatsky as the logical
choice for the supreme
office in the United States. Rebuffed by H.P.B., he became
embittered. In the
Religio-Philosophical Journal, of Chicago, he published his
correspondence with
Miss Collins relative to the mooted authorship of the
brochures. This magazine,
an organ of spiritistic-psychic interests, had given an
airing to Mr. W. Emmette
Coleman's attacks upon the authenticity of Madame
Blavatsky's classical
scholarship in Isis. Prof. Coues now used its columns to
discredit Madame
Blavatsky's theories of Mahatmaship by presenting some of
Miss Collins'
statements which virtually cast the charge of intellectual
dishonesty at
H.P.B.'s door. Miss Collins had stated to Prof. Coues in the
first of her
letters to him that she had made her declaration as to the
Mahatma-inspired
authorship of her Idyll of the White Lotus only because
Madame Blavatsky had
"implored and begged her to do so." This was as
much as to say that she had lied
about the inspirational nature of the writings because
Madame Blavatsky urged
her to do so.2 When H.P.B. came to London in 1887 she
associated Miss Collins
with herself as a sub-editor of her magazine Lucifer. This
relation subsisted
for two years, when Miss Collins' name was dropped from the
editorial staff and
her connection with the publication ended. No reason for the
breach was given
out publicly, but a letter of Madame Blavatsky's later
charged that her protιgι
had proved unreliable and untrustworthy in her occult
pledges.
Prof. Coues became more openly hostile to the
Blavatsky-Judge hegemony in
America and finally, upon preferment of formal charges of
untheosophical conduct
lodged against him by Mr. Arthur B. Griggs, of Boston, he
was expelled from the
Theosophical Society in June, 1889. Now fighting in the
open, Prof. Coues, early.171
in the next year, 1890, gave interviews to a correspondent
of the New York Sun
in Washington D.C., and painted his former cult-associates
with the black hue of
out-and-out imposture. In its Sunday issue, June 1, 1890,
the Sun gave a half-column
to a general statement of Theosophic and Blavatskian
charlatanry. Tasting
blood, Prof. Coues gave to the Sun representative an
extended article detailing
the whole alleged career of Madame Blavatsky and her dupes.
It made a seven-column
finely printed article in the Sun of Sunday, July 20. It
included open
declarations that Madame Blavatsky had in several instances
been a member of the
demi-monde in Paris and the mistress of two Russians
mentioned by name, by one
of whom she had given birth to a deformed child that died at
Kieff in 1868.
Every untoward incident in the life of his subject was
revamped and given a
plausible rτle in a vast scheme of deceptive posing, with
the Russian spy motive
once more doing service. This was considered going too far,
and Mr. Judge at
once filed suit in New York against the Sun for libel. The
case was delayed by
congestion in the courts, and before it ever came to trial
Madame Blavatsky
passed from the stormy scene. Her death left the newspaper
free from further
legal responsibility. But its efforts to procure material
evidence to defend its
position revealed that Prof. Coues had overreached himself
and that the
allegations were for the greater part, if not entirely,
unjust to the deceased
leader. Finally, in its issue of Sept. 26, 1892, the Sun
voluntarily retracted
its offensive articles of 1891, repudiated the Coues
interview, and gave Mr.
Judge space to write a devoted tribute to his late
co-worker.
"We were misled," the Sun observes, "into
admitting into the Sun's columns an
article by Dr. E. F. Coues, of Washington, in which
allegations were made
against Madame Blavatsky's character, and also against her
followers, which
appear to have been without solid foundation . . . we desire
to say that his
allegations respecting the Theosophical Society and Mr.
Judge personally are not
sustained by evidence, and should not have been
printed."
The failure of so well-equipped an agency as the New York
Sun to secure
incriminating evidence on any of the many charges lodged by
Prof. Coues against
Madame Blavatsky is pointed to by Theosophists as a complete
vindication of her
name.
Charges too much the same general effect were launched in a
renewed attack on
the good faith of H.P.B. by V. S. Solovyoff in his volume, A
Modern Priestess of
Isis, after her death. Solovyoff, a Russian of good family,
had met Madame
Blavatsky in Paris in 1884, had been fascinated by her
personality and her
intriguing philosophy and occult powers and had joined her
Society. He
manifested every desire to be admitted to the inner
mysteries of occultism, and
it is the opinion of impartial students of the data of this
controversy that
Madame Blavatsky's knowledge of his spiritual unpreparedness
for acceptance as a
chela under her Master and her refusal to have him admitted
to this exalted
relationship turned his worship of her into feelings of
another kind.3 His own
letters during the years of his acquaintance with Madame
Blavatsky and her
sister Madame Jelihowsky discloses his enthusiastic interest
in the esoteric
program, and his own description of a number of psychic
experiences which
occurred to him in person through the agency of his
compatriot and her Adept
aides is noteworthy. He recounts the personal appearance to
him one night of the
Master Morya himself, and gives the gist of the conversation
he had with the
exalted personage who stood before him in his astral
(materialized) form. M.
Solovyoff's testimony was considerably weakened later when
he repudiated the
reality of this phenomenon and endeavored to explain it away
with the statement
that he was at the time suffering from overwrought nerves.
The current of his
entire narrative in the Modern Priestess thinly disguises a
general
inconsistency between the attitude his letters show at the
time of his close.172
association with H.P.B. (and her sister) and that which he
assumed when he came
to write his books after her death. Madame Jelihowsky's
letters to him and her
rebuttal of many of his specific charges, which are appended
to his book as a
supplement, indicate that the foundation of his accusations
is erected on very
shifty sands. M. Solovyoff shows the capabilities of a good
novelist, and
Theosophists are persuaded, after painstaking analysis of
the entire situation,
that he drew largely for the material of his book upon the
romantic
inventiveness of his literary genius. In any case, his book
is added testimony
to H.P.B.'s powerful personality, whatever inferences one
draws from it
regarding her methods.
In 1888 the General Convention in India adopted the policy
of reorganizing the
Theosophical Society on the plan of autonomous sections. The
Society was thus
changed from a quasi-autocracy to a constitutional
federation, each part
independent as to its internal and local affairs, but
responsible to every other
part for its loyal support of the movement, and to the
headship which bound the
sections together.
As Col. Olcott and his partner were driving each in his own
direction-the one
for an exoteric goal and the other toward an esoteric
one-the history of the
Society in the years antedating Madame Blavatsky's death
reflects a struggle
between the aims and interests of the two. Col. Olcott was
cool to the
establishment of the Esoteric Section. He frequently resented
H.P.B.'s arbitrary
overriding of his authority. It was in miniature the clash
between church and
state, the spiritual and the temporal power, all over again.
While the priestess
lived she left no doubts as to which had supremacy. And
hardly less than in her
day, the later developments of Theosophic history can be
understood only in the
light of the reverence given the Masters. A word dropped
from their lips is the
highest law in the Theosophic kingdom. Material interest or
temporal expediency
must bend before its authority.
Curiously also the attitudes taken toward their common
enterprise by the two
Founders reflect the views of two opposing schools of
thought. Col. Olcott
looked upon the growth of the movement as a development, not
a teleological
unfoldment. It had no determinate purpose in the beginning,
no definite lines of
direction, but was largely the product of unintended and
unexpected events. Even
its declared objects were a "development." His
views on these matters were
reflected in an article, "The Theosophical
Society," signed by "F.T.S." (thought
to have been Mr. Richard Harte, one of the Colonel's
lieutenants at Adyar),
published in Theosophist for Jan, 1889. But at least one
gesture of assent to
the contrary view is made in the article when it says:
"This variation in the declared objects of the Society
must not be taken as
indicating any real change in the intentions of the
Founders. There is abundant
evidence in their writings and speeches that from the first
their purposes were
to stimulate the spiritual development of the individual and
to awaken in the
race the sentiment of Brotherhood."
Nevertheless, the Theosophist, during 1889, and thereafter,
kept printing
articles from Mr. Harte's pen, emphasizing the need of the
Society's standing
before the world divested of secret and mystical connection
with, or at any rate
vital dependence upon, the mysterious wire-pullers behind
the scenes, the
Mahatmas. Olcott's party, including Mr. Sinnett, Mr. Hume,
and other prominent
members, desired to avoid the inevitable storm of worldly
contumely which
adherence to the legend of the Masters provoked. They
claimed that the
organization rested on high scientific, philosophical, and
ethical principles
that stood on their own merits without adventitious
supernatural aid. They.173
wished it thus to take on the colors of anthroposophism and
humanism. They
desired first of all that the Theosophical Society should
appear eminently
respectable in the sight of intelligent people and not
expose the questionable
Masters to public view. To the Masters, on the other hand,
H.P.B. and Mr. Judge
were irretrievably committed. From the standpoint of these
two the danger to be
guarded against was that the exoteric leaders might make of
the Society a
worldly success, at the risk of occult failure. They feared
that Theosophy might
gain the whole world but lose its own soul. This division of
aims explains most
of the internal troubles which have arisen on board the ship
of Theosophy.
In one of the Harte articles mention was made of Madame
Blavatsky's "loyalty to
Adyar," i.e., to Col. Olcott's outer headship and
authority. She replied by
saying that:
"H.P.B. is loyal to death to the Theosophic Cause, and
those great Teachers
whose philosophy alone can bind the whole of humanity into
one Brotherhood."
She would be loyal to Olcott and the Theosophic officialdom
only so long as they
held true to the Masters and their Cause. Her loyalty to the
Colonel was based
on his tireless labors for that Cause. If he deserted it her
nexus of loyalty to
him was broken.
Events moved on from year to year, with "crises"
and storms every few years, yet
with rapid increase in membership. In 1886 there were 8
Lodges in the United
States; in 1887, 12; in 1888, 19; in 1889, 26; in 1890, 45;
in 1891, 57; and in
1892, 69. The American Section worked for the ethical ideals
of Theosophy. In
Europe and India the interests of Fellows were largely
centered upon the second
and third objects, comparative religion and psychism.
In 1889 the Esoteric Section was changed to the
"Eastern School of Theosophy,"
and about the same time the European branches and unattached
Fellows were
incorporated in a separate autonomous organization known as
the Theosophical
Society in Europe, of which Madame Blavatsky was constituted
President.
In 1888 a most notable event in the life of Theosophy
occurred in England, soon
to be followed by momentous consequences for the movement
everywhere. This was
the accession to the ranks of Mrs. Annie Besant, the noted
and eloquent radical
leader in England. Her life is now so well known4 that it is
needless here to
recount the events of her long and notable public career in
her native country.
A child of deep religious feeling and almost Catholic
devotion, she passed
through the stages of doubt and unbelief to atheism; threw
herself ardently into
such movements as the Fabian Society, Socialism, and the
Secular Society; worked
for birth control and slum amelioration and education; and
finally found her
destiny and her spiritual refuge when in 1888 she was asked
by Mr. W. T. Stead
to write for his magazine a review of the new
publication-The Secret Doctrine.
She testifies that here, in the great scheme of cosmogony
and wedded science and
faith, she saw the light that she had so earnestly been
seeking. She instantly
adopted the new teaching, met H.P.B., and threw her great
abilities for service
at her feet. She was accepted, and soon became the very
right hand of the aging
messenger. One of the most eloquent orators of her sex in
history, she brought
the message of Theosophy to crowded halls in most convincing
terms. Her advocacy
gave to Theosophy a vigorous stimulus. She had attended the
American General
Convention in 1890, and her second visit to this country was
made in 1891. Her
name and standing made her lecture tour in that year a great
success..174
Mrs. Besant again visited America in 1892, her speaking tour
of leading cities
lasting from her arrival in November of that year until
February of 1893. The
largest halls were packed, and a new wave of public interest
surged forward.
She and Mr. Judge had been made the two heads of the
Esoteric Section, to carry
on the functions of that body after Madame Blavatsky should
have passed from
earth. H.P.B. had in writing (1888) constituted Mr. Judge as
her "only
representative for said Section in America"; and she
had appointed Mrs. Besant
as "Chief Secretary of the Inner Group and Recorder of
the Teachings" given in
the organization. After Judge's death (Saturday, March 21,
1896) she was left as
the sole guardian of the inner society, and through it she
wielded for the years
to come a potent sway over the destinies of the whole
Theosophic body.
On May 8, 1891, not quite sixty years of age, Madame
Blavatsky ceased her earthy
labors for Theosophy. There was for a brief time a feeling
of disorganization
and helpless bewilderment when her leadership and strong
guardian hand were
withdrawn; but her death at the same time served to unite Theosophists
everywhere, at least temporarily, in a glow of fraternal
good will and renewed
loyalty to her message. The leader gone, the message became
the thing of
paramount importance. She had held no office save that of
Recording Secretary,
which was declared unique and abolished with her death. So
she could properly
have no successor. But innumerable mystics, mediums, and
psychics the world over
sprang forth with assertions that they had had commissions
from her spirit to
step into her earthly place. Probably most prominent among
these was Mr. Henry
B. Foulke, of Philadelphia, who declared that H.P.B.'s
spirit had appeared to
him, reproduced her portrait to identify herself, and given
him her mantle of
leadership. His claims were officially repudiated by Mr.
Judge.
In 1892 Col. Olcott presented his resignation as President
of the whole Society,
alleging ill-health as the reason. He was requested by the
American Section to
withdraw his action and later in the year did so, after a
vacation in the
Nilgiri Hills. The American Section had gone so far,
however, as to vote for the
election of Mr. Judge as his successor in office, and this
choice was endorsed
by similar action on the part of the European Section a
little later. Mr. Judge
was Vice-President of the Theosophical Society as well as
head of the General
Council in America.
In March, 1892, Col. Olcott began the serial publication of
Old Diary Leaves,
with the sub-title, "The True History of the Theosophical
Society," in his
magazine The Theosophist. He represented Madame Blavatsky as
a very human
person, with great weaknesses and foibles. He apparently
wished to combat a
natural disposition on the part of members to erect a
"worship" of H.P.B., and
to accept her writings as Theosophic "dogma." The
Diary ran on for many years,
and its effect was to weaken her prestige to an extent
hardly less than the open
attack of the Society for Psychical Research had done in
1885. There is reason
to believe that the Colonel's representation of her in this
narrative is an
uncritical account. His estimate of her does not accord with
several other
statements he had at times made as to her greatness. Even to
those who had
associated most closely with her she remained an enigma, an
insoluble mystery.
One of Koot Hoomi's letters had intimated that she was a
great soul (Mahatma) in
her own right, a far greater Adept in the spiritual
hierarchy than her outward
personality seemed to indicate. This, at any rate, is the
Blavatsky legend in
some quarters of the movement. But the Colonel reduced the
emphasis on this note
in his reminiscences. He had always felt that the
Theosophical Society could
succeed, even without her and her invisible Sages..175
In 1895 occurred the next momentous episode in American
Theosophical history-the
"Judge Case." It is a long story. It arose out of
the elements of the situation
already noted, viz., the emphasis of Col. Olcott and his
party on the exoteric
work of the Society, and the opposing attitude of Mr. Judge,
consistently
supported at first by Mrs. Besant, who emphasized Madame
Blavatsky's esoteric
teachings. The actual bone of contention was found in the
articles put forth by
Mr. T. Subba Row (Rao), eminent Hindu Theosophist and high
chela, as far back at
1886, questioning Mr. Sinnett's transcriptions of the
Master's teachings
regarding the sevenfold constitution of man in Esoteric
Buddhism, and the debate
involving the status of Mars and Mercury in the solar chain.
Madame Blavatsky's
The Secret Doctrine had reversed the earlier cosmological
teaching of K.H. as
given out through Sinnett. The situation, of course, threw
doubt on the
trustworthy character of Mahatmic instruction and, by
inference, on Madame
Blavatsky's rτle as the agent of higher Sages. From this
point discussion was
carried further into the domain of Mahatmic messages in
general, and the
spurious or genuine nature of their reception by
individuals. This question was
thrown into more violent agitation about 1892 when Mr.
Judge, together with his
editorial assistant on The Path, Julia Campbell-Ver Planck
(the "Jasper Niemand"
of editorial prominence), and Mrs. Annie Besant, the latter
most startlingly in
her farewell address to her former Secularist associates,
all publicly declared
that they had had bona fide messages from the living
Mahatmas. The significance
of these declarations-H.P.B., the accused agent of all
Mahatmic communication
while she lived, being now not on the scene-was hardly to be
exaggerated. But in
the eyes of the Olcott-Sinnett faction they tended to
lengthen the shadow of
H.P.B., where its shortening was to be desired in
furtherance of their partisan
interests. They fell in opposition, too, to the hosts of
psychic and mediumistic
messages received by numerous members of the Society at
sιances and circles. Mr.
Judge stood out for the authenticity of these messages, some
of which he stated
came to him, though he refused to submit, in corroboration
of their genuineness,
the "seal," handwriting or the other usual outward
marks of the Master's
letters. His opponents began more and more to allege forgery
or invention on his
part. The leading articles in the Theosophist, Lucifer, and
The Path at this
epoch dealt with phases of this debate. The insistent
charges emanating from the
exoteric party were that Judge and Mrs. Besant were trying
to erect, in the
matter of Mahatmic messages, a Theosophic dogmatism or
orthodoxy. They
reasserted the right of every Theosophist to accept or
reject messages, and
reiterated the cardinal principle of Theosophic
free-thought. In fine, it was
Judge's firm adherence to the fundamental thesis of
Blavatskian hierarchical
deputyship that made him more and more a thorn in the flesh
of the other group.
As long as Mrs. Besant stood with him it was difficult to
weaken his position.
The "anti-Blavatsky conspirators" then sought to
wean her away from his support,
and this was accomplished in 1893 through a series of
circumstances.
In the fall of that year the notable Congress of Religions
was held at Chicago
in connection with the Columbian Exposition, and Mrs. Besant
was the
representative of Theosophy. Through Theosophical influence
and financial
assistance, the delegate chosen to represent Brahmanism in
the Congress was one
Prof. Gyanendra Nath Chakravarti, instructor in India and a
member of the
Theosophical Society. He and Mrs. Besant became almost the
leading sensations of
the convention, she through her eloquence and power, he
through his dignity,
suavity, and show of erudition. Interesting as they proved
to be to outsiders,
they shortly became far more so to each other. It was the
delight of Chakravarti
to keep watch and ward over the brilliant Western champion
of his country's
traditions, and on Mrs. Besant's part his reputed possession
of great psychic
abilities was a lure which, with her mental and spiritual
leanings, became well
nigh irresistible. It is said that Chakravarti slept outside
her room door at
the hotel to guard her from intrusion.5 A close association
began between the.176
two which lasted for some ten or twelve years, when
Chakravarti's place of
foremost psychic interest in her regard was usurped by Mr.
C. W. Leadbeater. It
appears beyond question that the Brahmin's influence upon
the mind of Mrs.
Besant was profound, and in directions which the future
course of Theosophical
history readily reveals.
In the late fall of 1893 Mrs. Besant went for the first time
to India, her tours
there veritably "trailing clouds of glory" for
herself and the cause of
Theosophy. At the annual General Convention, always held
near Christmas, Col.
Olcott announced in his presidential address that a complete
accord had been
reached between his office and the renowned leader, and that
the latter would
shortly measure up to the spiritual status of H.P.B.
herself. This accord
indicated, among other things, that Mrs. Besant had admitted
into her mind some
of the animus against the purely esoteric view of Theosophy,
as upheld by H.P.B.
and Judge. She had begun to look upon the latter with
suspicion. Chakravarti's
influence in her "conversion" brought into view
the conflicting ethics of
Brahmanism and Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy
adhered to the Tibetan
Buddhistic, or Mahayana, theory of the sacrifice by the
Nirmanakayas of their
Nirvanic bliss for a service in behalf of humanity. The
Brahmanical philosophy,
on the other hand, held before its followers the acceptance,
rather than the
renunciation, of the higher blessedness. The latter taught
individual salvation,
the former the "Great Renunciation." Madame
Blavatsky's principle of Brotherhood
rather than mystical isolation and exaltation, would be
undermined by the
Brahmanical hypothesis. Hence Chakravarti's influence tended
to reduce the high
status of H.P.B. in the eyes of Mrs. Besant, and to increase
her animus toward
Judge.
The specific charges brought by Mrs. Besant (founded on
"complaints" of members,
so it was stated) against Judge were "alleged misuse of
the Mahatmas' names and
handwriting." Mrs. Besant became the mouthpiece of the
"demand for an
investigation." Mr. Judge denied the charges as
absolutely false, and demurred
to the trial as illegal under the Constitution of the
Theosophical Society
because it would involve a decision by the President of the
Society as to the
existence or non-existence of the Mahatmas, which would of
itself establish at
least one dogma of Theosophy, a thing forbidden. The Society
must remain neutral
on this as on all other questions of belief, save
Brotherhood.
"Letters from Mahatmas," he says in his answer,
"prove nothing at all except to
the recipient, and then only when in his inner nature is the
standard of proof
and the power of judgment. Precipitation does not prove
Mahatmas. . . . By one's
soul alone can this matter be judged. . . . By following the
course prescribed
in all ages the inner faculties may be awakened so as to
furnish the true
confirmatory evidence."6
He reasserted that he had received letters from Masters,
both during and since
the life of Madame Blavatsky.
Before the charges had even been formulated or his accuser
named to him, Mr.
Judge received an ultimatum from Col. Olcott, giving him the
choice of resigning
or of being investigated. Judge, instead of accepting either
alternative, denied
his guilt. At the ensuing Convention of the Theosophical
Society in America, the
Section unanimously upheld Judge, and urged that if he could
be tried for
allegations of having received Mahatmic letters, so, in
fairness, could Mr.
Sinnett, Col. Olcott, Mrs. Besant, and the others who had
stated publicly that
they had been favored with such letters..177
The Secretaries of both the European and the Indian Sections
issued letters to
the membership condemning the President's unconstitutional
methods of attacking
Mr. Judge. Col. Olcott, thus thrown unexpectedly on the
defensive, was aided by
a new National Section, the Australian, which Mrs. Besant
founded at that time
and which voted on his side; and on the advice of
Chakravarti and other lawyers
at Adyar he appointed a Judicial Committee, to meet in
London on June 27, 1894,
to try the charges against the accused. He himself, contrary
to his earlier
intentions, found it imperative to attend the
"trial" in person. The General
Council did not meet in London until July 7. Its first act
was to pass the
motion that Mr. Judge could not be tried as an official of
the Society, his
guilt, if any, being that of an individual and hence not
litigable.
The Special Judicial Committee met on July 10. Col. Olcott's
party was in
control. Mr. Judge was represented by his friends, Mr.
Oliver Firth and Mr. E.
T. Hargrove. Some of the eleven members of the Committee
were convinced of the
guilt of Judge beforehand; three or four were impartial,
rather feeling he could
not be tried; four others were convinced of his innocence.
Probably half of them
felt that the whole proceeding was a stupid business. Under
the circumstances it
was not surprising that the accusers saw the shabby nature
of their accusation,
and, with what grace they could muster, practically backed
out of the
transaction. Mr. Judge's dignity, frankness, and discretion
turned the tables
against his accusers. He denied the truth of the charges,
protested that he
could not be officially tried for his acts as an individual,
but averred his
readiness to produce actual proofs of his intercourse with
Mahatmas. The
opposition was forced to admit the legality of his position,
and was naturally
inclined to refrain from letting him produce his evidence on
the last point. The
Judicial Committee of July 10 adjourned after arriving at
the decision that it
had no jurisdiction to inquire into the charges. Col. Olcott
reinstated Mr.
Judge in his office of Vice-President of the Society.
Two days thereafter Mrs. Besant, stung by the failure of the
procedure against
Judge, read a full statement of her side of the case before
the British-European
Sections' Convention (the "trial" having been set
to antedate the annual meeting
by a few days). She said in one place, after telling how
messages may be
received in a variety of ways from invisible Intelligences,
"Any good medium may be used for precipitating messages
by any of the varied
entities in the occult world; and the outcome of these
proceedings will be, I
hope, to put an end to the craze for receiving letters and
messages, which are
more likely to be sublunary or human in their origin than
superhuman, and to
throw people back on the evolution of their own spiritual
nature, by which alone
they can be safely guided through the mazes of the
superphysical world."
Nowhere, perhaps, is she truer to the cause of Blavatskian
Spiritualism, or the
true occult and sacred science of the Ancient Wisdom, than
in this utterance;
and nowhere are the contrasting aims of Theosophy and
Spiritism so clearly
delineated. She ended by asking Judge's pardon for any pain
she may have given
him in trying to do her duty.
A plan had been agreed upon that both accuser and accused
should issue
statements elucidating their positions. Mr. Judge gave his
review of the case.
He repeated his denial of having forged the names or writing
of the Masters; he
readmitted having received what he regarded as genuine
letters from them; he
declared himself to be an agent of the said Masters, but
repudiated the claim
that he was their only channel-that communication with them
was "open to any
human being who, by endeavoring to serve mankind, affords
the necessary
conditions." He agreed that there were diverse methods
of receiving messages.178
from higher intelligences, but that the genuineness of such
communications must
be tested by the inner subjective evidences in each case. He
ended by admitting
his human fallibility and forgiving "anyone who may be
thought to have injured
or tried to injure me."
The questions raised in the "Judge Case" are of
great significance, for they are
the key to most of the controversial history of the
Theosophical movement. The
question of alleged messages from the High Ones has been the
opening wedge of
most of the schisms of the cult. This should be kept in mind
during the
remaining sections of the history.
It is of interest to note that in her editorial in Lucifer
following the
dismissal of the case, Mrs. Besant ends with the statement
that the disturbance
caused by her bringing the charges against Mr. Judge will
have been of value to
the Society in having aired and settled the point at issue,
that the
precipitation of a letter gives it no authoritative
character; and she adds that
the Society would now be freer from "credulity and
superstition, two of the
deadliest foes of a true spiritual movement." Her
critics have reminded her
since that those were precisely the things that H.P.B. and
Judge had tried to
impress on Theosophic students from time to time. The
episode did not clear the
air of one persistent obsession for which Madame Blavatsky
might, on Theosophic
reasoning, be held karmically responsible to some extent. It
was now understood,
in theory at least, that "occult" phenomena,
genuine or false, mediumistic or
adept, formed no part of the legitimate pursuit of the
Theosophical Society.
Madame Blavatsky had insisted upon this fact, yet the very
weight of interest
aroused by her own performances in that line exerted its
natural gravitational
force.
Another outgrowth of the case was the realization "that
occult phenomena cannot
in the present state of human evolution be proved . . . in
the same sense and to
the same extent that physical phenomena can be proved."7
They must continue to rest on subjective evidence. The trial
threw the whole
case for the Mahatmas, their superior teachings, their
hierarchical position,
back into the locale of faith and inner sanction. Here such
ideas had always
been kept in antiquity. The West, true to mechanistic
instinct, tried to "prove"
them empirically.
At any rate, Madame Blavatsky had, in the Preliminary
Memorandum sent out at the
time of the formation of the Esoteric Section, expressly
declared that in the
higher section "the student will not be taught how to
produce physical
phenomena, nor will any magical powers be allowed to develop
in him,"-that a
mastery of self, ethically and psychologically, was the
antecedent condition. If
Judge or any other already had phenomenal abilities, their
use must be
subordinated to the needs of morality and unselfishness. One
of the ethical
prescriptions of the Esoteric Section itself was that no
member should attack
another. One was forbidden to bring charges against a fellow
member or to hold
suspicious or malevolent feelings towards him. Mrs. Besant
in opposing Judge was
charged with violating these rules though her opposition was
not, strictly
speaking, personal.
But the storm, temporarily lulled, was to rage again. Some
wounded feelings and
sullen resentments were not fully allayed. In October, 1894,
the London
Westminster Gazette commenced a series of articles by Edmund
Garrett entitled
"Isis Very Much Unveiled: The Story of the Great
Mahatmic Hoax." It was an
attempt to expose Madame Blavatsky's and Mr. Judge's alleged
invention of the
whole Mahatmic structure. His material had been furnished
him by Mr. W. R. Old,.179
one of Col. Olcott's sub-editors on the Theosophist, who was
nursing a grudge
for having been suspended from the Esoteric Section by Mrs.
Besant for violation
of his pledge of secrecy. With a mass of authentic data in
his hand, Mr. Garrett
made a vicious assault upon Theosophy and its Society. The
attack stimulated the
anti-Judge faction into renewed hostility, and they rushed
again to the fray. On
his part Judge, believing Mrs. Besant had violated her
pledges to the Esoteric
Section, by virtue of his authority as H.P.B.'s American
representative in that
organization, summarily deposed Mrs. Besant from her
joint-headship with him. In
his written notice to that effect, he stated that Mrs.
Besant had fallen under
the influence of minds hostile to the "tradition
clustering around the work of
H.P.B.," and named Chakravarti as the chief culprit.
Judge in this connection
reminded all concerned of the "Prayag Letter" (one
sent to Mr. Sinnett in 1881
by Master K.H.) in which the Master himself had warned the
Allahabad Lodge (the
branch in which Sinnett, Hume, and Chakravarti were leading
members), of the
false occultism in the Brahmanical teachings. Judge set
forth the conflict of
two views in the Theosophical Society regarding the movement
itself. The first
one, implanted by H.P.B. herself, was that Theosophy is a
body of eternal
knowledge, unchanging, known of old, held in custody by
Adept Guardians, of whom
H.P.B. was the responsible and accredited agent in the world
for her century.
The other was that the whole teaching was itself a growth, a
development, and as
such had taken gradual shape as changing circumstances had
led Madame Blavatsky
onward to new vistas. He, Judge, was the official upholder
of the first view,
and would use his proxy from Madame Blavatsky to maintain
her tradition. If his
mentor could be proven false in one matter, doubt would be
thrown upon all her
work. Either Theosophy and its promulgator were what she
said they were, or the
Society might as well close its doors.
Mrs. Besant saw the order dismissing her from the Esoteric
Section office, but
refused to heed it. Instead of resigning she called upon
loyal members to follow
her. Her action thus split the Esoteric Section
organization. She sent out a
circular stating that not only had Madame Blavatsky made her
the Chief Secretary
of the Inner Group and Recorder of the Teachings, but had
named her as her
"Successor." She thus stood out against Judge's
authority and proceeded to lay
plans to drive him out of the Society. She made a journey to
Australia and
thence to India in the fall of 1894, and at the annual
holiday Convention in
India she and Olcott managed to swing the whole body of
delegates against Judge,
on the old charge of sending out forged Mahatma messages. He
was vilified openly
by a dozen orators, and a resolution was carried upon Col.
Olcott to demand his
resignation from the Vice-Presidency or his expulsion from
the Society. Judge's
first response was a statement that he could not reply to
the charges because
they had never been given to him. He refused to resign from
the Vice-Presidency.
In April of 1895 the Convention of the American Section was
held at Boston. With
practical unanimity it upheld Mr. Judge. It went further. A
resolution presented
by Mr. C. A. Griscom, Jr., urged that the American Section
declare its autonomy
and take a new name, The Theosophical Society in America.
The resolution was
carried by a vote of nine to one and a new organization
effected. A fraternal
greeting, with a pledge of solidarity in the movement, was
drawn up and sent to
the Convention of the European Section then meeting. Judge
was elected
President. This act placed the Movement as paramount in
importance to the
Society. (A minority faction remained true to the old
organization, and this
became later the nucleus of the restored American Section of
the Theosophical
Society, now the largest numerical body.)
In London the overtures of the new American autonomous body
were coldly received
by the European Convention, dominated by Mrs. Besant. Olcott
declared the
greeting out of order, but it was read and "laid on the
table." It amounted to.180
an actual rejection of the overtures. The step taken by the
American Section was
spoken of as "secession."
The new organization in the United States got quietly to
work, but Mr. Judge had
been broken in health by the long struggle and his death
came on March 21, 1896.
He had conducted himself, all the while he was the target of
the heavy attacks
against his integrity, with a dignity, a lack of rancor, and
a poise which in
the light of later developments stand out in marked contrast
to the fury and
venom exhibited by his assailants. Whatever the merit or
demerit of his position
in the Theosophic movement, the fact is that he adhered with
firm loyalty to his
avowed principles of belief and conduct. He was at least
free from that
inconstancy to program or to theory which has since been so
conspicuous a
characteristic of Theosophic leadership. It is of record
that Mr. Sinnett later
"forgave" him, and that Mrs. Besant and Col.
Olcott repented of having
persecuted him on personal charges to the detriment of
Theosophical practice.
His death plunged Theosophy in America into its darkest
days. It precipitated a
period marked not so much by attacks from outside as by
increasing dissensions
and divergences within the ranks. Although Mrs. Katherine
Tingley came forward
almost immediately as Outer Head and successor to Judge, she
did not long
command the support and esteem of American Theosophists
which he had enjoyed.
One after another, small groups refused to follow her and
established themselves
as independent organizations, until the ranks were decimated
by separate
societies, each claiming to be the embodiment of true
Theosophy, and each
tracing its lineage to Madame Blavatsky. From this condition
Theosophy in
America has not yet recovered; consequently, it remains for
us to describe the
origins and aims of these various groups, leaving it to the
reason of the reader
and to the logic of history to decide the issues involved.
The records of the
time are none too clear, and the literature highly
controversial. Since many of
the documents of the Esoteric Section are necessarily
secret, and since many of
the issues are centered in personalities, it is impossible
to get a clear
picture of the events without an intimate acquaintance with
the temperaments,
the incidental circumstances, and the petty details which
gave color and
direction to the theoretical issues debated on paper and
platform.
Immediately upon Judge's death a group of leading
Theosophists in New York City,
with Mr. E. T. Hargrove as an active spirit, called meetings
as early as March
29 to consider a course of action. Mr. Hargrove read a
statement to the effect
that Mr. Judge had not left his followers without guidance;
that among his
private papers directions had been found as to successorship
and future
leadership; and that the form of assistance which Judge had
enjoyed from the
Hierarchy would be continued to them. This announcement was
signed by E. T.
Hargrove, James M. Pryse, Joseph H. Fussell, H. T.
Patterson, Claude Falls
Wright, Genevieve L. Griscom, C. A. Griscom, Jr., and E.
Aug. Neresheimer,
all people of character and prominence. Circulars and
announcements were
repeatedly issued to the membership from this group in New
York, intimating that
Mr. Judge's wishes concerning his successor were known and
would be carried
out.8 It was also announced that the Masters had imposed a
condition, namely,
that the name of the new head must be withheld for a year.
Presumably this was
to be a trial period during which the new leader was to test
his abilities and
readiness to assume the heavy responsibilities borne by
Judge. Veiled references
were made to him under the name of "Promise." It
was stated that "a new light
had gone out from the Lodge," and that this
"Promise" was a person of psychic
gifts and the recipient of messages from the Masters. From a
speech made by Mrs.
Tingley at this time we quote:.181
"Today the needs of humanity are embodied in one great
call: 'Oh God, my God, is
there no help for us?' All people should heed the call of
the Master and help to
belt the world within the compass of the 'cable-tow' of the
crusaders, for in
their force is the quality of the 'golden promise'-the Light
of the Lodge. It
will radiate throughout the world, and with the aid of the
widow's mite will
make perfect the Master's plan."
At the end of April, 1896, the Annual Convention of the
Theosophical Society in
America met in New York City. Mr. Hargrove was elected
President of the
organization. The Path was changed to Theosophy. Mrs.
Tingley was present and
spoke. She announced plans for founding a "School for
the Revival of the Lost
Mysteries of Antiquity." Money was contributed
liberally, and the leaders went
ahead with their plans for the expansion of the movement.
Suddenly, on May 17, Mrs. Tingley announced to her
associates that she had been
informed that the New York press had discovered that she was
the person referred
to as the new Outer Head, and that they would publish the
news the next day. To
avoid such a "leak," Mr. Hargrove, as President of
the Society, that morning
anticipated the newspapers and made a public announcement to
the effect that
Mrs. Tingley had been designated as Judge's successor. On
the following morning,
May 18, 1896, a long article appeared in the New York
Tribune on the subject.
Thus the safeguard of anonymity, originally prescribed as a
condition of Mrs.
Tingley's appointment, was abrogated.
Meanwhile the leaders had announced their plans for a
"Crusade" to carry the
message of Theosophy around the world and more especially to
vindicate the
strength and authenticity of Judge's American Society before
the eyes of
Theosophists in Europe and India. Accordingly in June Mrs.
Tingley, Mr.
Hargrove, Mr. and Mrs. Claude F. Wright, Mr. Pierce, and two
or three others,
set sail for a trip around the world. They made numerous
addresses at various
points en route defending their cause. They also completed
plans for the
establishment of the School for the Revival of the Lost
Mysteries of Antiquity
at Point Loma, California, and on the return voyage Mrs.
Tingley laid the
corner-stone of the school. Returning to New York early in
1897, they began the
task of consolidating and organizing "The Universal
Brotherhood."
But dissension arose almost immediately after their return
from the "Crusade." A
group of the leaders became increasingly suspicious that
Mrs. Tingley's policies
and practices were not in line with those established by
Judge. The forces of
ambition and jealousy also entered into the scene. Whatever
the deeper issues
were, the external friction came to a head in the dispute
between Mrs. Keightley
and Mr. Neresheimer over the control of the publishing
business and the
editorial policy of the magazine, Theosophy. Mr. Neresheimer
was supported by
Mrs. Tingley, whereas Mrs. Keightley, Mr. Hargrove, and
their friends, took a
firm stand against him. As a result of this disagreement,
Mr. Hargrove resigned
the presidency of the Theosophical Society in America, and
Dr. Keightley
resigned the presidency of the affiliated Theosophical
Society in England. In
January, 1898, Mrs. Tingley called representatives of the
Theosophical Society
from different parts of the United States to her home, and
they drew up and
adopted the Constitution of The Universal Brotherhood
Organization. Meanwhile
some of the friends of Mr. Hargrove proposed a rival plan
calling for the
election of Mr. Hargrove as President and Mrs. Tingley as
"Corresponding
Secretary" (H.P.B.'s former title). But Mrs. Tingley
repudiated this scheme and
in return Mr. Hargrove and his friends rejected Mrs.
Tingley's leadership.
At the Annual Convention in Chicago, February, 1898, the
whole issue was
decided. Mrs. Tingley proceeded aggressively with her plans
for The Universal.182
Brotherhood, which she wished to absorb the Theosophic
Society in America. Mr.
Hargrove and his friends, on the other hand, refused to
recognize the legitimacy
of the new organization. When the issue was put to a vote,
over ninety per cent
of the delegates followed Mrs. Tingley.
Thereupon Mr. Hargrove and his associates withdrew with a
few dozen delegates to
another hall, declared the action of the majority to be
illegal, and agreed to
maintain the Theosophical Society as a distinct body. A
month later they
formally announced Mrs. Tingley's removal as Outer Head on
the grounds that by
slandering fellow members she had violated her vows and
conducted her
organization on policies unworthy of Theosophy.9 Several
E.S.T. pamphlets were
issued explaining the causes of their repudiation of Mrs.
Tingley and
incidentally throwing additional light on the circumstances
of Mrs. Tingley's
coming into power. This body then published The Theosophical
Forum, in which it
further defined its stand and claimed to be the legitimate
continuation of
Judge's work and organization. Legal proceedings were begun
to recover the
membership lists and archives of the Society from The
Universal Brother-
hood, but this move was unsuccessful. During the next few
months several hundred
Theosophists expressed their adherence to this Society. This
group, now known
simply as The Theosophical Society, with headquarters in the
New York Branch,
continues to carry on its work through local branches. It
publishes The
Theosophic Quarterly, to which Mrs. Charles Johnston has
contributed
extensively. It naturally has its own Esoteric Section and
has made many
scholarly contributions to Theosophic research and
literature. True to the
spirit of Judge, it has emphasized Western rather than
Oriental esoteric
traditions, emphasizing the mystic elements in Christianity.
It venerates the
wisdom of the Master, Jesus, and some of the Christian
Saints, but it has no
ecclesiastical tendencies. It refuses to commit its members
to any Theosophic
creed, to any official pronouncements on the subject of
"phenomena," or in
general to any matters which concern personalities and
personal beliefs. Its
meetings are devoted largely to study, discussion, and
meditation upon the
writings of H.P.B. and other Theosophic classics. It remains
a small but
distinguished group.
After the Chicago Convention of 1898, the vast majority of
American Theosophists
followed Mrs. Tingley in The Universal Brotherhood and
Theosophical Society,
with headquarters at Point Loma. Its official organ, The
Searchlight, conducted
a vigorous campaign and under the leadership of Mrs.
Tingley, the organization
flourished for several years. Through Mr. A. G. Spalding, of
baseball fame, Ex-Secretary
of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, and others, sufficient funds
were
secured to establish permanent headquarters at Point Loma, a
beautiful site
overlooking the Pacific. The place became a colony, where
new ventures in the
education of children according to Theosophic ideas were
embarked on, with
results said to be exceptional. In 1900 the Rβja-Yoga School
was founded which
was later expanded into the Theosophical University. An
Aryan Memorial Temple
was erected, now known as the Temple of Peace; and a Greek
theatre was built,
the first in the country, where Greek and Shakespearean
dramas have been
performed. The Headquarters are now conducted under the
direction of Dr.
Gottfried de Purucker and Mr. J. H. Fussell, both of whom
were associated with
Mrs. Tingley from 1898.
Mrs. Tingley lived until July 11, 1929, when her death was
announced from
Visingso, Sweden, where she had gone to a Theosophic
community to recover from
an automobile accident suffered in Germany.10 She had done
much work of a
humanitarian nature. Besides the School of Antiquity at
Point Loma she had
founded an International Brotherhood League, a summer home
for children at.183
Spring Valley, New York, and a home for orphan children at
Buffalo. She had
opened three schools in Cuba.
Another group of Theosophists in 1899 drifted into "The
Temple of the People,"
sponsored by Dr. W. H. Dower and Frances J. Meyers, of
Syracuse, New York.
Messages coming through a Mrs. Francia A. La Due, known
mediumistically as "Blue
Star," were its inspiration until her death in 1923. A
remnant of this group is
established in a colony at Halcyon, California.
In 1899 another offshoot came to growth in "The
Theosophical Society of New
York," which is to be distinguished from "The New
York Branch of the
Theosophical Society" mentioned above. Dr. H. H.
Salisbury, long a friend of Mr.
Judge, Mr. Donald Nicholson, editor of the New York Tribune,
also a friend of
Judge and H.P.B., and Mr. Harold W. Percival, headed a group
which numbered Dr.
Alexander Wilder and Mrs. Laura Langford among its
adherents. Mr. Percival for
years edited a successful magazine, The Word.
Dr. J. D. Buck, of Cincinnati, an early member of the
American Section and
devoted supporter of Judge, later threw his strong influence
on the side of the
claims of a Mr. Richardson-known as "T.K."-and
Mrs. Florence Huntley, to
represent the Masters. Some of his friends went with him in
this allegiance, but
the exposure of "T.K." undermined his movement and
he died shortly afterward.
Mrs. Alice L. Cleather, one of the inner group of students
around Madame
Blavatsky during the years preceding her death, formed a
"Blavatsky
Association," organized to combat the successorship of
Mrs. Besant in
particular. It was declared that Mr. Judge had fallen under
the deception of
Mrs. Tingley. Mrs. Cleather wrote three or four books
upholding the esoteric
character of Madame Blavatsky's mission.
In England Mr. G. R. S. Mead, long co-editor with Mrs.
Besant of Lucifer, parted
from her after 1907 and founded "The Quest
Society," which until recently
published The Quest. His Society has a highly respectable
membership and devotes
its energies to comparative religion and psychical research.
Mr. Mead is most
active in the scholarly activities of the Society.
In California, home of many cults, Mr. Max Heindel,
originally a Theosophist,
launched later a Rosicrucian Society, and published a
valuable work, Rosicrucian
Cosmo-Conception. His association maintains headquarters at
Oceanside,
California, and following his death his wife has continued
the direction of its
activities.
Likewise in California Mr. Robert Crosbie established the
parent United Lodge of
Theosophists at Los Angeles in 1909. Mr. Crosbie adhered to
the conviction that
Mr. Judge alone worked in the true direction of H.P.B.'s
movement, and he gave
to his organization the task of perpetuating the original
teaching of
Blavatskian Theosophy, as promulgated by Judge. He founded
the periodical
Theosophy, a revival of The Path. He labored to restore the
unique status of
H.P.B. and Judge as esoteric teachers, and his society thus
became a "drift back
to source." As H.P.B. herself had looked after the
spiritual side of the
movement, regarding that as more important than its outward
organization, so the
United Lodge of Theosophists has discounted the value of
organization and of
personalities in it. The names of the speakers are usually
not attached to
lecture announcements, nor those of authors to books and
articles. The interests
of the association are primarily in Theosophy and the
movement, not in any
Society; in Theosophic truth, not in any individual
expression of it. A spirit
of accord binds together various Lodges, isolated groups and
scattered.184
associates throughout the United States, and in recent years
there has been
marked growth, as the disturbances in the larger "Besant"
section drove many of
its old adherents into the U.L.T. The defection of Mr. P. B.
Wadia, eloquent
Hindu Theosophist, from the Besant fold and his affiliation
with the United
Lodge in 1922, furnished no small impetus to the latter's
increased power. Mr.
John Garrigues, of Los Angeles, has devoted indefatigable
energy to the work of
this body, and few persons have a wider acquaintance with
the facts of
Theosophic history than he. Residing in New York until 1930,
he exerted a
pronounced influence in the councils of the U.L.T.
throughout the country.
In Washington, D.C., there has been published for many years
by Mr. H. N.
Stokes, a leaflet called The Oriental Esoteric Library
Critic. Mr. Stokes
conducts a circulating library of occult and Theosophic books,
but finds time in
addition to edit his diminutive sheet, which has been a
veritable thorn in the
flesh of the Besant leadership for many years. He seizes
upon every
inconsistency in the statements or policies of the
Besant-Leadbeater-Wedgewood
hegemony and subjects it to critical analysis. Many
Theosophists tolerate his
belligerent spirit and strong language for the sake of the
facts he adduces,
which have usually great pertinence to Theosophic affairs.
He is particularly
hostile to the developments of Neo-Theosophy under the
Besant and Leadbeater
rιgime, and above all to the institution of the Liberal
Catholic Church as a
Theosophic appanage.
As a result of the great impetus given by the Theosophical
movement, scores of
organizations with aims mystic, occult, divine, spiritual,
Oriental,
astrological, fraternal, and inspirational, have sprung up
on all sides, to
emphasize one or another aspect of the teaching, real or
fancied. A reference to
Hartmann's Who's Who in Occult, Psychic, and Spiritual
Realms will astonish one
with the number and diversified character of these bodies.
Their existence marks
one of the surprising phenomena of our contemporary
religious life.
It remains to sketch with the greatest brevity the history
since 1896 of the
large international body of the Theosophical Society over
which Mrs. Annie
Besant has presided since 1907.
It will be recalled that when in Boston in 1895 the American
Section, out of
loyalty to its leader, Judge, "seceded" from the
parent organization and became
autonomous, a minority dissented from the action of the
Convention and remained
in adherence to Col. Olcott's Society. Prominent in this
party were Dr. Mary
Weeks Burnett, Mr. Alexander Fullerton, Dr. La Pierre, and
others. This faction
became the nucleus around which, as the larger Judge group
disintegrated,
gradual accretions of strength materialized. This was in
part due to the
prestige which officialdom and regularity carries with it,
and in part to the
position and prominence of Col. Olcott and the great
influence wielded by Mrs.
Besant. In a few years it became numerically far the
strongest group, and today
includes some ninety per cent of American Theosophical
membership.
After Judge passed from the scene, Col. Olcott and Mrs.
Besant could devote
their undivided energies to Theosophic propaganda, both in
the Society at large
and in the Esoteric Section, so that the movement expanded
rapidly in all parts
of the world. Charters were given to National Sections in
most of the countries
on the map. The Society flourished outwardly and
organically. The question as to
whether it held true to its original spirit and purpose is
of course a debatable
one. It was at this time that the beginnings of the drift
toward those later
presentations of Theosophical teaching which have come to be
known as Neo-Theosophy
were becoming manifest. Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater stood
out
unrivalled as the literary exponents and formulators of
Theosophy. Their.185
statements were hailed with as much respect and authority as
those of Madame
Blavatsky in the earlier days. Both of them wrote
assiduously and lectured with
great frequency, and their publications rapidly began to
supplant all other
works on the Theosophic shelves. With The Ancient Wisdom, A
Study in
Consciousness, and Esoteric Christianity Mrs. Besant began a
literary output
which has been rarely matched in volume. Some eighty or more
works now stand in
her name. Mr. Leadbeater's total may reach twenty, but they
are mostly of a more
pretentious character than Mrs. Besant's, being accounts of
his clairvoyant
investigations into the nature and history of the world and
man. His works had
to do mostly with subjects connected with the Third Object
of the Society, the
psychic powers latent in man. Mrs. Besant touched alike on
all three of the
objects, not neglecting the ethical aspects of Theosophy,
which she emphasized
in such works as The Path of Discipleship and In The Outer
Court. Predominantly
under the influence of these two leaders the power of
Theosophy spread widely in
the world.
Mr. Leadbeater was one of the participants with Mr. Sinnett
and others in occult
investigations carried on in the London Lodge, an autonomous
group not fully in
sympathy with some phases of Madame Blavatsky's work. He
developed, as was
reported, great psychic abilities, as the result of which,
notwithstanding his
frequent disclaiming of occult authority, he exercised great
influence over the
thought of a large number of members of the Society. His
studies and his books
reflected the attitude of "scientific common
sense." He claims to have brought
the phenomena of the superphysical realms of life, of the
astral and the mental
plane, of the future disembodied life, and of the past and
future of this and
other spheres, under his direct clairvoyant gaze. He wrote
elaborate
descriptions of these things in a style of simplicity and
clearness. He asserted
that such powers enabled one to review any event in the past
history of the
race, inasmuch as all that ever happened is imprinted
indelibly on the substance
of the Astral Light or the Akasha, and the psychic faculties
of trained
occultists permit them to bring these pictures under
observation. With the same
faculties he asserted his ability to investigate the facts
of nature in both her
realms of the infinite and the infinitesimal. Hence he
explored the nature of
the atom, its electrons and its whorls, and in collaboration
with Mrs. Besant,
who was alleged also to possess high psychic powers,
published a work entitled
Occult Chemistry. For years he stood as perhaps the world's
greatest "seer," and
in books dealing with Clairvoyance, Dreams, The Astral
Plane, Some Glimpses of
Occultism, The Inner Life, The Hidden Side of Things, Man:
Whence, How and
Whither, he labored to particularize and complement Madame
Blavatsky's sweeping
outline of cosmic evolution and human character, as given in
The Secret
Doctrine. Certain schools of his critics assert flatly that
he has only
succeeded in vitiating her original presentation. Two years
ago The Canadian
Theosophist, a magazine published under the editorship of
Mr. Albert Smythe at
Toronto, published a series of articles in which parallel
passages from the
writings of Madame Blavatsky and the Mahatma Letters on one
side, and from the
books of Mrs. Besant, Mr. Leadbeater, Mr. C. Jinarajadasa,
on the other, give
specific evidence bearing on the claims of perversion of the
original theories
by those whom they call Neo-Theosophists. The articles
indicate wide deviations,
in some cases complete reversal, made by the later
interpreters from the
fundamental statements of the Russian Messenger and her
Overlords. The
differences concern such matters as the personality of God,
the historicity of
Jesus, his identity as an individual or a principle, the
desirability of
churches, priestcraft and religious ceremonial, the
genuineness of an apostolic
succession, and a vicarious atonement, the authority of
Sacraments, the nature
and nomenclature of the seven planes of man's constitution,
the planetary
chains, the monad, the course of evolution, and many other
important phases of
Theosophic doctrine. This exhaustive research has made it
apparent that the.186
later exponents have allowed themselves to depart in many
important points from
the teachings of H.P.B.11
Whatever may be the causes operating to influence their
intellectual
developments, they have succeeded in giving Theosophy a
somewhat different
direction which, on the whole, has emphasized the religious
temper and content
of its doctrines. It should be added that these criticisms
are not
representative of the great majority of followers of the
movement, who regard
the later elaborations from fundamentals as both logical and
desirable.
For years Mr. Leadbeater was looked upon as the genuine link
between the Society
and its Mahatmic Wardens, and his utterances were received
as law and authority
by members of the organization from the President downward.
But at the height of
his influence in 1906 came charges of privately teaching to
boys under his care
sexual practices similar to some of those practiced in
certain Hindu temple
rites. They cleft through the ranks of the Society like a
bolt of lightning.
Mrs. Besant, horrified, asked for his resignation. Mr.
Leadbeater admitted the
charges, explained his occult and hygienic reasons for his
instruction, and
resigned. But not many months had passed before Mrs. Besant
reversed her
position and began a campaign to restore Mr. Leadbeater to
fellowship and good
repute, she having received from him a promise to
discontinue such teaching.
Col. Olcott had conducted an inquiry at London, and the
disclosure probably
hastened the aging President's death, though the main
contributing cause was an
accident on board ship. He died early in 1907, and the event
caused a conflict
over the matter of succession. It was noised about Adyar,
Madras, where his
death occurred, that there had been a visitation of a number
of the Masters at
the bedside of the dying President-Founder and that the
succession had there
been indicated. The extraordinary occurrence was said to
have been witnessed by
those present in the death chamber, who were Mrs. Besant,
Mrs. Marie Russak
Hotchener, and two or three others. As the matter is one of
considerable moment
in the history of the Theosophical Society, I take the
liberty to quote several
sentences from a personal letter which Mrs. Hotchener wrote
me from Los Angeles
under date of August 3, 1915, relative to the event:
"I was present when the Masters came to Col. Olcott.
There was no possibility of
hallucination, for too many things occurred physically which
could be proven. I
did some writing even, and did two or three things I was
told to do, and besides
the whole visit of the Masters to Colonel Olcott was to help
him and to better
the future of the Society. I also saw the Master lift
Colonel from the floor
where he had prostrated himself as HIS feet, and put him on
the bed as though
the Colonel were a baby. Master M. (Morya) did it, who is
seven feet tall. When
the Doctor came a few minutes later (when the Masters had
gone) he scolded the
nurse and myself for the fact that Colonel had been out of
bed-his heart and
condition of the body showed it and the terrible excitement.
We were told of
things which were afterwards proven and which none of us
knew at the time; whole
sentences were quoted from the Master's letters to H.P.B.
which none of us had
seen, and objects mentioned the existence of which none of
us knew, and many
other things. Then, too, the Colonel had seen the Masters
with H.P.B. and there
was no possibility of his being deceived. Their coming saved
the Society from
going into an era of the 'letter of the law' dominating
completely the spirit,
and both Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant have confirmed their
coming and in their
physical bodies. There is sufficient proof, but I could not
write it all now."
The witnesses affirmed that the Masters had designated Mrs.
Besant as the
successor of Col. Olcott, as she was already that of H.P.B.
This demonstration.187
of the living interest of the Masters in the affairs of the
Society12 vitally
enhanced Mrs. Besant's prestige, and as she was already in
control of the
"throbbing heart of the Theosophical Society,"
viz., the Esoteric Section, the
ensuing world-wide election of a new President, held in
1907, could have but one
result. She had practically no opposition, and has been
re-elected at intervals
since that time. Mr. Leadbeater was restored soon after
these events, and the
exposition of the major phases of the Neo-Theosophy began in
earnest. Many old
and loyal members were forced out by the advent of one
disagreeable situation or
utterance after another, as they saw the old teachings
warped or strangely
reinterpreted; but the new interest brought in others in
larger numbers. Perhaps
the most spectacular of all Mrs. Besant's enterprises was
inaugurated in 1909--
the formation of The Order of the Star in the East, for
spreading the idea,
which she and Mr. Leadbeater had promulgated, of the
approaching manifestation
of the Lord Maitreya as the World Teacher. The basis of her
grandiose scheme was
Mr. Leadbeater's psychic discovery that the very body which
the Lord was to
occupy during the years of His coming earthly sojourn was
already among them in
the person of one Jiddu Krishnamurti, a fine young Brahmin,
then in his early
'teens. Mrs. Besant forthwith legally adopted the youth,
aided with his
education, part of which was gained in England, and
successfully resisted a law-suit
of the boy's father to regain control of him. She then
exploited him before
the world as the "vehicle" of the coming World
Teacher. An abundance of
effective publicity was gained, if nothing more substantial.
Several times the
lad's body seemed to have been obsessed by an overshadowing
presence, and his
lips at such times spoke unwonted words of wisdom. The young
man was elevated to
the headship of the Order of the Star in the East; a neat
magazine, The Herald
of the Star, was established for propaganda purposes, and
the thousands of
Theosophists and some outsiders who followed Mrs. Besant in
this new field were
worked up to a high pitch of hushed expectancy of the
dιnouement. Krishnamurti's
sponsors had originally stated that the spirit of the Great
Lord could be
expected to use the body of the young Hindu fully in some
fifteen or twenty-five
years, but on the occasion of the visit of Mrs. Besant and
the youth to America
in August of 1926, the announcement was made that the
consummation of the divine
event was certain to be delayed no longer than Christmas of
that year. The
affable young man bravely carried the mantle of
near-divinity during all the
intervening years; but finally in the course of the year
1929, speaking at a
meeting of the followers of his cult at their European
headquarters at Ommen, in
Holland, he rather suddenly executed what he had intimated
to some of his
friends, who had noted his utterances against organizations
for spiritual
purposes, by dissolving the Order of the Star, by refusing
to be regarded as an
authority, and retaining for himself only the humble rτle of
spiritual teacher.
In spite of the exalted position gratuitously foisted upon
him, he had evidently
grown restive under Mrs. Besant's dominance. His action has
been generally
interpreted as a courageous assertion of his independence of
mind and spirit. By
it he has apparently gained rather than lost prestige. His
public appearances
continue to draw large audiences which express sympathy with
his aims and react
kindly to the appeal of his personality and spiritual cast
of mind. Mrs. Besant
was left to find devices of her own to explain the
twenty-year-long fiasco. She
has explained that Mr. Krishnamurti is a teacher in his own
right.
In the early days of the Krishnamurti agitation, probably
about 1912, Mr.
Leadbeater published in serial form the results of a
pretentious clairvoyant
investigation, being no less than an account in much detail
of the last forty
reincarnations of the Indian lad in various nations
including the Atlantean
countries, with the concurrent lives of some score or more
of individuals,
nearly all prominent then in the Theosophical Society, who
had been keeping in
the same group life after life down through the ages. His
work was styled The.188
Lives of Alcyone, the latter appellation having been given
to Krishnamurti as
his true or cosmic name.13
About 1914 Mrs. Marie Russak was commissioned to introduce a
ritualistic order
within the Theosophic Society and in the course of the next
two or three years
she installed some twenty or more
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTERs of an organization given the name of
"The Temple of the Rosy Cross." An elaborate
regalia was required and a
ceremonial was devised which a member of the Masonic body
told the author
equalled in beauty and dignity anything he was conversant
with in the higher
degrees of Masonry. The initiates took a solemn pledge to do
nothing contrary to
the interests of their Higher Selves and the ceremonies were
said to have been
attended with elevated types of spiritual experience. Great
emphasis was laid on
the "magnetic purity" of everything handled by the
officiants. Powerful
sublimations of spiritual forces were thought to be
operative through the
instrumentality of the ritual. Mrs. Russak had proved to be
an efficient
organizer and the "Temple" had apparently done
much to spiritualize the appeal
of Theosophy. But suddenly after an existence of about three
years the
organization was declared at an end, for reasons never given
out frankly to the
membership.
Coincident with the "Alcyone" campaign a movement
within the Theosophical
Society was launched, again actuated by Mr. Leadbeater's
mystic observations,
that went in direct contradiction to Madame Blavatsky's
warnings and
prognostications on the subject of religious sectarianism.
This was the
establishment of "The Old Catholic Church" (later
changed to "The Liberal
Catholic Church") as carrying the true apostolic
succession from the original
non-Roman Catholic Church, the primitive Christian Church.
The link of
succession brought down from the early Middle Ages was
picked up in Holland in
the remnants of the Old Catholic Church still lingering
there, and the first
Bishop consecrated from the old line was Mr. James I.
Wedgewood, English
Theosophist. He in turn anointed Mr. Leadbeater, who thus
received the title of
Bishop, by which he is now known. It was declared that the
true unction of the
original consecration was thus transmitted down to the
present and reawakened to
new virility in Theosophic hands. Mr. Leadbeater wrote The
Science of the
Sacraments to give a new and living potency to ritual through
occult science,
and the new Church was declared to be the felicitous channel
of expression for
such Theosophists as needed the uplifting virtue of a
dynamic ceremonial. The
teachings of Theosophy might be intellectually satisfying;
the Liberal Catholic
Church would round out the Theosophic life by providing for
the nourishment of
the aesthetic and emotional nature, through means of
white-magical potency. Mr.
Leadbeater was more Catholic than any Roman in his claims of
marvelous efficacy
in the performance of the rituals. His pictures of the
congregational thought-forms,
the aggregate vibrational energies set in motion by
devotion, which he
says take definite shapes and hover over the edifice during
a service, are
daring and original.14
Agitation over Mr. Leadbeater's sex ideas cropped out at
intervals, and in 1922
there was a renewed stir over this subject when a Mr.
Martyn, of Sydney,
Australia, a Theosophist of high standing, gave out a letter
in which he
recounted certain incidents which he alleged took place
while Mr. Leadbeater was
a guest in his home some time before.
There were charges and denials; and it should in fairness be
said that Mr.
Leadbeater had confided to personal friends that through his
clairvoyant vision
he was enabled to discern that much suffering could be saved
the boys later on
in their lives if some of the pent-up sexual energies could
be given vent in the
way he prescribed. He asserted that the "bad
Karma" of such sex expression would.189
be confined to the boys themselves and easily lived down,
whereas otherwise they
would be led to actions which would involve them in the sex
Karma of others.
Some Theosophists, including one or two medical men and
women, have gone on
record as declaring that the principles underlying Mr.
Leadbeater's sexual
philosophy in this particular might well save the world some
of the misery and
evil that arises from improper understanding of the issues
involved. Mrs. Besant
herself may have seen some such saving grace in the
situation, which would
account for her sudden and definite swing to Mr.
Leadbeater's support following
her first outraged sensibilities. The issue is not at
present a live one.
Certainly Mr. Leadbeater's ideas on sex, though tolerated by
some, are to be
regarded as generally repudiated by the vast majority of
Theosophists.
Later Theosophical leadership in America passed successively
through the hands
of Dr. Weller Van Hook, of Chicago, Mr. A. P. Warrington, an
attorney from
Virginia and Mr. L. W. Rogers, a capable business executive,
who is now the
President of the large American Section. It was in Mr.
Warrington's rιgime that
the Theosophical settlement, under the name of Krotona, was
located in
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. This settlement was the
outcome of a plan
conceived by Mr. Warrington quite apart from any
Theosophical connection, and it
was not until after the leaders of the movement learned of
the plan that it was
determined to carry it out in the interest of Theosophists.
After an exhaustive
search of the South and the West for a suitable site,
covering a period of five
years or more,15 it was finally decided to locate in
California; acreage was
secured in the Hollywood hills, some beautiful buildings
erected, and the
Theosophical Headquarters was transferred from Chicago. The
Headquarters has
since been transferred to Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of
Chicago, for the
advantage of a centralized location; and the Krotona
settlement has been removed
to a beautiful site in Ojai Valley where it now flourishes
and is known as
Krotona, as before. Here institute courses in Theosophy and
related subjects are
given and headquarters are maintained for the E.S. in the
Western Hemisphere.16
When Mrs. Besant's "Karma" (as Theosophists phrase
it) took her to India, she
saw India moving towards the fulfilment of her vision and
(as has been recently
publicly asserted) the wish of the Himalayan Adepts, in the
constituting of
India as a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. The
Theosophical headquarters
at Adyar, in Madras, has long been recognized as a center of
educational reform
in India, and of propaganda for the modern revival of Hindu
painting in the
oriental manner.
Dr. Besant, still a prominent figure, is advancing into the
eighties, and Mr.
Leadbeater, too, is aging. What direction the course of
future Theosophic
activity will take when these two dominant figures have been
withdrawn, is
matter for current speculation. Their policies have
alienated some of the
staunchest early adherents of Madame Blavatsky and Judge.
Already certain trends
are discernible which indicate the setting in of a
back-to-Blavatsky movement
within the ranks of the Theosophical Society. There is
already in full swing in
the West a tendency to turn to a study of oriental spiritual
science, and the
contributions of Madame Blavatsky to this field are hardly
likely to diminish in
importance during the coming decades. She herself prophesied
that her
Captain Kidd could be discovered-by clairvoyant means-and
utilized to finance
the undertaking. A rusty key was actually found in the hands
of a skeleton
discovered where the clairvoyant described it as lying
buried, but evidently the
treasure chests were not unearthed. This item was given to
the author by one of
the group meeting with the clairvoyant at the time..190
The Secret Doctrine would be accepted as a text-book on
modern science in the
twentieth century. Whether that prophecy be fulfilled or
not, it is of note that
the list of students who are dragging it down from dusty
shelves is rapidly
increasing at the present writing. Through the efforts
mainly of the United
Lodge of Theosophists reprints of the original plates of the
two (First and
Second) volumes have been made, and the book made more
readily available to the
public. Announcement has also been made from Adyar that H.
P. Blavatsky's first
draft of volume one of The Secret Doctrine will be published
in 1931.17
Some statistics as to book circulation are indicative of the
spread of this
stream of philosophic thought. Officials at the United Lodge
of Theosophists,
New York City, supplied data on this score. As the U.L.T. is
one of the lesser
bodies propagating Theosophy, the figures here given would
cover but a minor
fraction of the actual circulation of Theosophic literature.
In recent years the
United Lodge organization has sold:
Ocean of Theosophy, W. Q. Judge . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.50,000
Translation of the Bhagavad Gita, W. Q. Judge . . . . . .
.40,000
The Voice of the Silence, H. P. Blavatsky . . . . . . . .
.30,000
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, W. Q. Judge. . . . . . . . . . .
.25,000
Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky (Original Text). . . . .
10,000
Conversations on Theosophy: Pamphlet. . . . . . . . . . .
150,000
In addition, there are constantly increasing calls for the
two ponderous
Blavatskian works, Isis and The Secret Doctrine. These
figures may be indicative
of the strength of the back-to-Blavatsky movement in
Theosophic ranks.
Theosophy is now organized in more than forty countries of
the world, with an
active enrolled membership of more than fifty thousand.
There are said to be
some ten thousand members in America with over two hundred
forty branches or
lodges. Many more thousands have come in and gone out of the
Society. Various
reasons account for these desertions, but in few cases does
relinquishment of
formal membership indicate a rejection of Theosophical
fundamentals of doctrine.
"Once a Theosophist always a Theosophist," is
approximately true, pointing to
the profound influence which the sweeping cosmology and
anthropology of the
system exercises over a mind that has once absorbed it. It
may then be said that
there are several millions of people who have assimilated
organically the
teachings of Theosophy, and who yield a degree of assent to
those formulations..191
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XIII
SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
The Theosophical Society is therefore not composed of a band
of believers in
certain creedal items, but a body of students and seekers.
They are travelers on
a quest, not the settled dwellers in a creed. They seek to
keep fluidic the
impulses, intuitions, and propensities of the life of
spiritual aspiration, in
opposition to the tendency to harden them into dogma.
It is quite impossible for any one to trace with precision
the influence of the
Theosophic ideology, first, upon the psychology and then
upon the conduct of
devotees. It can be done only within the limits of general
outlines. The one
consideration that determines for the Theosophist the value
of any thought or
act is whether it tends to promote that unification of human
mass consciousness
along the spiritual ideals pictured in the Ancient Wisdom.
This demands of the
individual Theosophist that he make of himself, through the
gradual expansion of
his own consciousness, a channel for the increased flow of
high cosmic forces
that will work like leaven through the corporate body of
humanity and dissipate
human misery by the power of light and virtue.
Nevertheless it seems possible to attempt to ascertain the
type of people who
have been attracted to Theosophy and to examine the special
traits and
environments, if any such were manifest, which have afforded
the most fruitful
ground for the seed of the Theosophic faith. Likewise it
seems desirable to
estimate the influence of Theosophy upon the lives of its
votaries. Through the
cordial coφperation of the Theosophical Headquarters at
Wheaton, Illinois, a
questionnaire was sent out.1 Answers were received from
nearly seventy per cent
of the two hundred addresses-an unusually high return-and
they have been
carefully tabulated. The names submitted for the mailing of
the questionnaire
were selected by the President of the American Section of
the Theosophical
Society, and they must therefore presumably be considered to
represent, not all
Theosophists, but those of the "Besant Society"
exclusively.2
The professions and occupations represented an average
cross-section of American
life. A few admitted membership in no profession. There were
included editor,
bishop, railroad executive, corporation president,
manufacturer, doctor, lawyer,
dentist, teacher, musician, artist, writer, nurse, college
tutor, house painter,
army officer, insurance agent, draughtsman, carpenter,
stenographer, merchant,
realtor, business manager, engineer, college secretary,
hotel consultant,
photographer, advertising writer, Post Office inspector,
restaurant proprietor,
public accountant, social service worker, veterinary, beauty
culturist, oil.192
operator, jeweler, optometrist, Braille worker, and a
college teacher of
biology. In the list also were a motor car company
president, a newspaper
publisher, a life insurance superintendent, an educator, a
motion picture
producer, a city sanitary engineer, a sheet metal
contractor, a factory head,
and a railroad comptroller. It may be said that these
Theosophists are a picked
group and hardly to be regarded as truly typical of the rank
and file of the
personnel. Whether this be true or no, it appears that
Theosophists are
representative American people, gaining their livelihood in
conventional and
respectable ways. The mark of their Theosophy would have to
be looked for in
their avocations, not in how they earn their living. They
seem to be of the
typical urban middle class, with few farmers or workers.
The ages of those answering the letters ranged from 21 to
86, with an average at
about 45. The average length of time the respondents had
been actively
affiliated with Theosophy was about 15 years. The replies
chanced to come from
an exactly equal number of men and women. This proportion is
hardly to be
explained as a result of artificial selection in the mailing
list and is
significant in view of the fact that in practically all
Christian denominations
women considerably outnumber men. Indirect evidence of this
fact was revealed by
the preponderance of women over men among those who came to
Theosophy from the
various Christian churches; which was offset by the
preponderance of men over
women among those who had previously been members of no
religious organizations.
Geographically the distribution revealed that the strength
of the movement lies
in the Middle West. Illinois, California, and New York are
the headquarters of
the Society, and the replies indicated that the most active
Theosophists were
concentrated in these areas. New England and the South (with
the exception of
Florida) show only a very slight membership.
As to the matter of the former religious connections, the
figures brought out
several interesting facts. The complete table follows:
Methodists . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Greek Catholics . . . . . . . . 2
Episcopalians . . . . . . . . . . 26
Christian (unspecified) . . . 2
Presbyterians . . . . . . . . . . 11
Spiritualists . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Congregationalists . . . . . . 10
Atheists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Lutherans . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Reformed . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Roman Catholics . . . . . . . 8
Masonic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Baptists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Freethinkers . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Unitarians . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Agnostic . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Non-Church . . . . . . . . . . 27
Aligning these into significant groups we get:
Evangelicals . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Episcopalians . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Catholics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Non-Church . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . .14.193
As might be expected, those who had been Episcopalians were
most numerous in the
East and South. The Evangelical denominations were, of
course, most strongly
represented in the Middle West, and they prove to be the
most fertile soil for
the inroads of Theosophy. The reasons for this fact are
suggested below. About
eighteen per cent of the respondents explicitly spoke of
themselves as still
Christians. About ten per cent came to Theosophy through an
interest in psychic
phenomena, healing or magic, of whom about fifty per cent
came from Evangelical
churches and none from the Catholic churches. The number of
those who came to
Theosophy from non-church environments is seen to be a
fairly large proportion
of the total. As to this element Illinois showed the
heaviest rating, with
California next, though the group was on the whole fairly
evenly distributed
over the country. Those from the non-church group supplied a
disproportionately
large percentage of the most active workers and leaders. The
Liberal Catholic
members seemed to come almost exclusively from the
Episcopalian and the
Evangelical groups, and those who had been Catholics were
practically
negligible. The reasons given for the abandonment of their
former faiths to
embrace Theosophy are of interest. Theosophy came in the
main to people who had
already experienced a pronounced distaste for the creeds of
the churches.
However suddenly the transfer of loyalty and faith may have
come, the way
thereto had apparently been long in preparation. There is in
the letters either
a tacit inference or a direct statement that the espousal of
Theosophy was
largely attributable to the failure of the churches in
meeting their
intellectual needs. The increasing inadequacy of the church
doctrines made
Theosophy seem richer, or, to put the same fact positively,
the largeness of the
Theosophical system made Christian theology seem
impoverished. The percentage of
those explicitly noting their dissatisfaction with the
churches was 47, while
almost all the remainder emphasized the positive intellectual
stimulation given
them by Theosophy. However, such vague personal testimony
must be received with
a measure of caution until we estimate what particular
elements were most
effective.
While the specific motives for shifting from religious
regularity, or from no
institutional or creedal anchorage over to a new and exotic
cult, have been
quite variously set forth by the respondents, almost all of
them used the
general formula: Theosophy rendered life more intelligible
than any other
system. All the more detailed statements as to the reason
for faith in Theosophy
are but amplifications of this one theme. It is the only
cult, we are told, that
furnishes to the seeker after light and understanding an
adequate rational
support for the assumption of Law, Order, Love, Wisdom,
Purpose, and
Intelligence in the Course of Things. A closer examination
into the meaning of
these phrases soon reveals that certain specific issues were
uppermost.
Theosophy appeared to reconcile science (especially
evolutionary science) with
religion; it enlarged the moral drama to the vast
proportions of cosmic epochs
demanded by evolution. It gave a teleological explanation of
evolution which was
nevertheless not narrowly anthropocentric, and an
explanation of the origin of
evil which was not arbitrary or cruel. Then, too, as many
replies definitely
stated, the doctrine of reincarnation was regarded as an
improvement over the
orthodox doctrine of resurrection, day of judgment, heaven
and hell, as well as
over the vague liberal doctrine of immortality. And the law
of Karma was felt to
be more rational than salvation by forgiveness, vicarious
atonement, or "faith"
or "grace." Some of the writers found a higher
form of theism in Theosophy, but
the majority said little about God, and were quite content
to substitute
meditation and study for praying to a personal God. Here are
a few typical
statements:
"Theosophy answered the great problems. It made life
intelligible on the basis
of Love, Law, Intelligence.".194
"Orthodoxy nowhere furnished a satisfactory solution to
the riddles of life."
"Theosophy presented a logical and reasonable theory of
life,which in turn
served as an inspiration to self-discipline and right
living. It provides the
only sure 'ground for morals.'"
"The general narrowness and inconsistency of religions
and particularly their
inability to explain wrong and suffering turned me away from
the churches.
Theosophy brought satisfaction, peace and happiness."
"Theosophy reconciled science and religion with each
other, and both with
philosophy, and me with all of them in one great
synthesis."
"Theosophy gave me a satisfying philosophy of life and
religion and restored me
to Christianity after the church had lost me."
"I never knew there existed so rational and complete a
theory of life until I
met with Theosophy."
"Theosophy alone answered the questions that must be
raised by any reflective
mind."
"Theosophy appealed to me by its vast
comprehensibility. It leaves no fact of
life unexplained in a system into which the single facts fit
with amazing
aptness."
"Theosophy came to me through the death of my husband,
when I stood face to face
with a disenchanted universe and sought to break through to
a rational
understanding of the meaning of things."
"I felt the need for some way out such as that provided
by reincarnation. I
found Theosophy a complete philosophy answering my mental
demands to the full."
"Christianity could not stand the test of thinking;
Theosophy gave me the larger
truths which could bear the brunt of logical
questioning."
"Theosophy presented the only rational scheme of life
that I had ever heard of."
"The laws of reincarnation and Karma for the first time
enabled me to see life
as under the reign of Order and Love."
"Theosophy was the first system I ever met with that
reconciled me with the
universe. I was a rebel before."
"I was happy to find in Theosophy an acceptable
explanation of the soul-harrying
problems connected with the apparent cruelty of life."
"Not only did Theosophy solve for me the riddles of the
universe but it opened
up new vistas of meaning in the service, rituals and
traditions of the church
itself."
"Theosophy quieted my feeling of uneasiness over the
fact that so many religions
must be wrong, by revealing the synthesis of truth back of
all religions alike."
"My special studies in the lines of Social and Criminal
Psychology made
reincarnation a necessity for my thinking, and no longer a
speculative luxury.".195
"While the church evades the main issues, Theosophy
courageously attacks the
vital problems at their root and succeeds in solving their
meaning by revealing
the hidden side of truth."
"I revolted at the fear which the churches, through
some of their repellent
doctrines, instil into the minds of children. Theosophy
dispelled all this dark
shadow and let in the light."
"I felt the hypocrisies of the religious leaders. I
went from Applied Psychology
to Christian Science, to Spiritualism and found rest only in
Theosophy at last."
"The shallowness of church teaching drove me to
agnosticism, from which happily
Theosophy rescued me."
"From Christian Science I went to occultism, and I was
once more happy to be
shown that life could be understood after all."
"I found in Theosophy an unshakable foundation on which
to base my logic."
"Theosophy came to me in the crisis of a nervous
breakdown, and by giving me a
flashing clear understanding of life and its problems,
brought me safely through
the ordeal. It revealed that I was part of the plan and gave
me a new zest for
living."
"Perhaps nothing within the scope of mind can solve the
Mystery of Life, but
Theosophy rendered it no longer a mystification."
"There were the sneers of skeptics and unbelievers on
one side and horrified
piety of believers on the other. Neither had any rational
scheme of life to
offer. Theosophy was a joyous refuge from this
dilemma."
"There was something clearly wanting and illogical in
the doctrine of salvation
through the vicarious sacrifice and atonement; now all is
clear."
"I found here a body of ideas systematized and unified,
which, furthermore, rang
true when tested out against the hard facts of life
itself."
"I was a freethinker by nature, but after all one must
think systematically, not
loosely, and Theosophy presented to me a marvelous compact
and well-knit
structure."
"Work in the slums brought a sense of the breakdown of
orthodox faith in the
face of social disaster. I saw religion as a drug and curse
to the lowly. I
wanted Truth rather than religion. I found it in
Theosophy."
"Theosophy gave me light after I had long been immersed
in the grossness of
materialism."
"Exactly where the church fell down Theosophy held its
ground."
"A Sunday School teacher, what I taught choked me. Theosophy
was like a cup of
water to one dying of thirst."3
Some sixty-five per cent of the replies indicated that the
philosophical and
scientific aspects of Theosophy were the primary interests,
leaving about
thirty-five per cent attracted chiefly to the religious or
devotional phases..196
Forty-two per cent gave definite time to daily meditation.
Thirty- six per cent
explicitly avowed a non-meat diet, though the proportion of
abstainers from
animal food is undoubtedly must larger. A few ladies
testified to having
forsworn the wearing of furs on humanitarian grounds.
Alcohol and tobacco were
taboo along with flesh foods in the case of several.
Whereas almost all the respondents spontaneously emphasized
the intellectual
aspects of Theosophy, comparatively few were explicit on the
element which is
supposed to be central in their faith, viz., the practice of
universal
brotherhood. Only about twenty per cent emphasized such
interests (brotherhood,
social service, etc.) as in Theosophic terminology would
belong to the practice
of Karma Yoga; and of these an unusually large percentage
were women. They came
mostly from Evangelical churches or no-church; few were
Episcopalians. This
group, emphasizing Karma Yoga, proved to be fairly distinct
from the group which
emphasized meditation, though both groups were recruited
largely from former
Evangelical Protestants. The practice of meditation seemed
to have little
measurable effect one way or the other on the amount of time
and energy devoted
to work for the Theosophical Society. About fifty per cent
said they gave a
definite amount of time to specific Theosophic activities,
and of these about
thirteen per cent gave at least one-half of their time to
the cause. Many gave
from a half-hour to three, four, five hours per day; some
"three evenings a
week, with home study"; others "one-fourth to
one-half of all time." Many
devoted "all spare time" to it. But a significant
element that crept into quite
a large percentage of the answers was the statement that the
pursuit of
Theosophy "permeates all my activity";
"enters into my whole life as an
undercurrent"; "colors all my behavior, modifies
my attitude toward all I do";
is "a subconscious influence directing my entire
life"; is "the background of my
life, polarizing all I do to the one central principle of
brotherhood"; forms
"the pervasive spirit of all I do;" is "the
motivating agent in all my efforts
to work and to serve"; and the like expressions. In
other words there is the
persuasion with these people that one is a Theosophist all
the time, whatever be
one's momentary mode of activity. "The specific time I
give to it is impossible
to estimate," says one; and "it absorbs my thought
and is the determining motive
in every act of my life," avers another. The percentage
so declaring themselves
ran as high as seventy-four.
The query desiring to ascertain which leaders and which
Theosophic organizations
commanded higher allegiance brought answers which were a
foregone conclusion
from the fact that all the respondents were attached to the
"Besant"
organization. The favored leaders were naturally Mr. C.
Jinarajadasa, Mr. A. P.
Sinnett, Mr. G. S. Arundale, Mr. L. W. Rogers, Mr. Max
Wardall, Bishop Irving
Cooper, and others. Although the name of the Society's great
Founder, Madame
Blavatsky, was brought in apparantly in most cases
incidentally or as an after-thought,
she or her writings were mentioned by one out of every
three. Only two
failed to name Mrs. Besant or Mr. Leadbeater at all. As to
favored writings,
those of Mrs. Besant and her colleague again led the list,
with J.
Krishnamurti's books a good third. As to choice of
organization the
International Theosophical Society, of which Mrs. Besant is
the presiding
genius, found a unanimous approval in this selected group.
Only two declared
they were impartial or indifferent to all organization.
As a secondary interest (all Theosophists are urged to
devote some energy to at
least one outside humanitarian movement) many expressed
allegiance to the Order
of the Star in the East, Mrs. Besant's vehicle to prepare
the way for the
reception of the announced Avatar (since renounced by
Krishnamurti himself and
disbanded by him), the Order of Service, the League of
Brotherhood, the Karma
and Reincarnation Legion, the Liberal Catholic Church, the
Co-Masonic Order,.197
Anti-Vivisection Societies, the League for Prison Work, the
Order of the Round
Table (for children), and other subsidiary forms of
extra-Theosophic activity..198
FOOTNOTES
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER I THEOSOPHY
1 The same idea is voiced by William James (Pragmatism, p.
299): "I thoroughly
disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest
form of experience
extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in
much the same relation
to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets
do to the whole of
human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries.
They take part in
scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are
merely tangent to
curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of
which pass wholly beyond
their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of
things."
2 See in particular such works as From Religion to Philosophy,
by F. M. Cornford
(London, 1912), and From Orpheus to Paul, by Prof. Vittorio
D. Macchioro (New
York, Henry Holt & Co., 1930).
3 "The work of philosophy thus appears as an
elucidation and clarifying of
religious material. It does not create its new conceptual
tools; it rather
discovers them by ever subtler analysis and closer
definition of the elements
confused in the original datum."-From Religion to
Philosophy, by F. M. Cornford,
p. 126.
4 Ibid., pp. 94 ff.
5 "Physis was not an object, but a metaphysical
substance. It differs from
modern ether in being thought actual. It is important to
notice that Greek
speculation was not based on observation of external nature.
It is more easily
understood as an echo from the Orphic
teachings."-Ibid., pp. 136 ff.
6 "The fate of man was sympathetically related to the
circling lights of
heaven."-Ibid., p. 171.
7 Ibid., pp. 176 ff
8 The universal soul substance.
9 Quoted by F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, p.
185.
10 For the Orphic origin of Heraclitus' philosophy consult
From Orpheus to Paul,
by Prof. Vittorio D. Macchioro, pp. 169 ff.
11 "The most primitive of these (cardinal doctrines of
mysticism) is
Reincarnation (palingenesis). This life, which is
perpetually renewed, is reborn
out of that opposite state called 'death,' into which, at
the other end of its
arc, it passes again. In this idea of Reincarnation . . . we
have the first
conception of a cycle of existence, a Wheel of Life, divided
into two hemicycles
of light and darkness, through which the one life, or soul,
continuously
revolves."-From Religion to Philosophy, p. 160.
12 "Caught in the wheel of birth, the soul passes
through the forms of man and
beast and plant."-From Religion to Philosophy, p. 178.
13 From Religion to Philosophy, p. 197. Also From Orpheus to
Paul,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VIII..199
14 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1920), p.
138.
15 Ibid., p. 156.
16 "That the doctrine (exile of the soul from God) . .
. was not invented by
Empedocles is certain from the fact that the essential
features of it are found
in Pindar's second Olympian, written for Theron of Acragas,
where Empedocles was
born, at a date when Empedocles was a boy. Throughout the
course of that
majestic Ode revolves the Wheel of Time, Destiny and
Judgment. The doctrine can
be classed unhesitatingly as 'Orphic.' The soul is conceived
as falling from the
region of light down into the 'roofed-in cave,' the 'dark
meadow of Ate.' (Frag.
119, 120, 121.) This fall is a penalty for sin, flesh-eating
or oath-breaking.
Caught in the Wheel of Time, the soul, preserving its
individual identity,
passes through all shapes of life. This implies that man's
soul is not 'human';
human life is only one of the shapes it passes through. Its
substance is divine
and immutable, and it is the same substance as all other
soul in the world. In
this sense the unity of all life is maintained; but, on the
other hand, each
soul is an atomic individual, which persists throughout its
ten thousand years'
cycle of reincarnations. The soul travels the round of the
four elements: 'For I
have been ere now, a body, and a girl, a bush (earth), a
bird (air) and a dumb
fish in the sea.' (Frag. 117.) These four elements compose
the bodies which it
successively inhabits.
"The soul is further called 'an exile from God' and a
wanderer, and its offence,
which entailed this exile, is described as 'following
Strife,' 'putting trust in
Strife.' At the end of the cycle of births, men may hope to
'appear among
mortals as prophets, song-writers, physicians and princes;
and thence they rise
up, as gods exalted in honor, sharing the hearth of the
other immortals and the
same table, free from human woes, delivered from destiny and
harm.' (Frags. 146,
147.) Thus the course of the soul begins with separation
from God, and ends in
reunion with him, after passing through all the moirai of
the elements."-From
Religion to Philosophy, p. 228.
17 By comparison with the passage expounding Empedocles'
theory of rebirth
(supra), the following assumes significance: "From
these (Golden Verses of
Pythagoras) we learn that it had some striking resemblance
to the beliefs
prevalent in India about the same time, though it is really
impossible to assume
any Indian influence on Greece at this date. In any case the
main purpose of the
Orphic observances and rites was to release the soul from
the 'wheel of birth,'
that is, from reincarnation in animal or vegetable forms.
The soul so released
became once more a god enjoying everlasting
bliss."-John Burnet, Early Greek
Philosophy, p. 82.
18 From Religion to Philosophy, p. 247.
19 R. D. Hicks: Introduction to Aristotle's De Anima,
(Cambridge, 1907).
20 Ibid. "It is now generally agreed that we may
distinguish a group of early
dialogues commonly called 'Socratic' from a larger group in
which the doctrines
characteristic of Orphism and Pythagoreanism for the first
time make their
appearance"-From Religion to Philosophy, p. 242.
"Thus, the Megarian and Eleatic doctrines, though they
had not satisfied him,
had impelled Plato to look for a point of union of the One
and the Many; but he
was enabled to find it only by a more thorough acquaintance
with the
Pythagoreans. It is only after his return from Italy that
his doctrine appears.200
fully established and rounded off into a complete
system."-Johann Edward
Erdmann: History of Philosophy (London, 1891), Vol. I, p.
231.
21 "Constantly perfecting himself in perfect Mysteries,
a man in them alone
becomes truly perfect, says he in the Phaedrus."-Isaac
Preston Cory: Ancient
Fragments: Plato; Phaedrus, I, p. 328.
22 This passage, from Cory's Ancient Fragments, is in a
translation somewhat
different from that of Jowett and other editors, though
Jowett (Plato's Works,
Vol. I, Phaedrus, p. 450) gives the following: ". . .
and he who has part in
this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his mind,
is by the use of
purifications and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil.
. . ." The term
"pure light" appears to be a reference to the
Astral Light, or Akasha, of the
Theosophists. For this term, Astral Light, Madame Blavatsky
gives in the
Theosophical Glossary the following definition: "A
subtle essence visible only
to the clairvoyant eye, and the lowest but one (viz., the
earth) of the Seven
Akashic or Kosmic principles." She further says that it
corresponds to the
astral body in man.
28 See argument in Dr. Annie Besant's Esoteric Christianity
(London, 1895).
29 See Samuel Angus: The Mystery Religions and Christianity;
and H. A. A.
Kennedy: St. Paul and the Mystery Religions (London, New
York, Bombay, Madras,
Calcutta; Hodder and Stoughton, 1913).
30 As in 2 Corinthians, XII, 1-5.
31 "Plotinus, read in a Latin translation, was the
schoolmaster who brought
Augustine to Christ. There is therefore nothing startling in
the considered
opinion of Rudolph Eucken that Plotinus has influenced
Christian theology more
than any other thinker."-Dean R. W. Inge: The
Philosophy of Plotinus (New York,
London, 1918), Vol. I.
23 I. P. Cory: Ancient Fragments, Plato, Ep. II, p. 312.
24 Porphyry: Life of Plotinus, in the Introduction to Vol.
I, of the Works of
Plotinus, edited by Dr. Kenneth S. Guthrie.
25 "Proclus maintained that the philosophical doctrines
(chiefly Platonism) are
of the same content as the mystic revelations, that
philosophy in fact borrowed
from the Mysteries, from Orphism, through Pythagoras, from
whom Plato
borrowed."-Samuel Angus: The Mystery Religions and
Christianity (London, J.
Murray, 1925), p. 267.
26 Quoted by Madame Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled (New York, J.
W. Bouton, 1877),
Vol. I, p. 432. Proclus' familiarity with the Mysteries is
revealed in the
following, also quoted by Madame Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled,
Vol. II, p. 113:
"In all the Initiations and Mysteries the gods exhibit
many forms of themselves,
and appear in a variety of shapes, and sometimes indeed a
formless light of
themselves is held forth to view; sometimes this light is
according to a human
form and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape."
27 "For over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean
world was familiar with
a type of religion known as Mystery-Religions, which changed
the religious
outlook of the Western world and which are operative in
European philosophy and
in the Christian Church to this day. Dean Inge, in his
Christian Mysticism, p.
354, says that Catholicism owes to the Mysteries . . . the
notions of secrecy,.201
of symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace,
and above all, of
the three stages of the spiritual life; ascetic
purification, illumination and
epopteia as the crown."-Samuel Angus: The Mystery
Religions and Christianity:
Foreword.
32 C. W. Leadbeater: The Christian Creed (London, 1897); Dr.
Annie Besant:
Esoteric Christianity.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER II THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
1 Paul Morphy, a chess "wizard" of startling
capabilities, excited wonder at the
time, like the eight-year-old Polish lad of more recent
times.
2 Encyclopedia Britannica: Article,
"Swedenborgianism."
3 William Howitt: History of the Supernatural (J. B.
Lippincott & Co.,
Philadelphia, 1863), Vol. II, p. 213.
4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 214.
6 Ibid.
7 As early as 1824 Unitarians in America took a lively
interest in the Hindu
leader Rammohun Roy, who had "adopted
Unitarianism," and also in the work of the
Rev. William Adam, a Baptist missionary, who had become
converted to
Unitarianism in India. A British-Indian Unitarian
Association was formed, and
the Rev. Chas. H. A. Dall was sent to Calcutta, where he
effected the alliance
with the Brahmo-Somaj.
8 Article: Emerson's Debt to the Orient, by Arthur E.
Christy, in The Monist,
January, 1928.
9 Ibid.
10 The Journal shows that as early as 1822 he had looked
into Zoroaster. In 1823
he refers to two articles in Hindu mathematics and mythology
in Vol. 29 of the
Edinburgh Review. By 1832 he had dipped into Pythagoras. In
1836 he quotes
Confucius, Empedocles, and Xenophanes. By 1838 he had read
the Institutes of
Menu, and again quoted Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius. The
first reference to
the Vedas is made in 1839. In 1841 he had seen the Vishnu
Sarna (a corrupt
spelling of Vishnu Sharman), together with Hermes
Trismegistus and the Neo-Platonists,
Iamblichus, and Proclus. The She-King and the Chinese
Classics are
noted in 1843, and the first reference to the Bhagavad Gita
in 1845. In 1847
comes the Vishnu Purana, and in 1849 the Desatir, a
supposedly Persian work, and
in 1855 the Rig Veda Sanhita.
11 This passage is found in Letters of Emerson to a Friend,
edited by Charles
Eliot Norton.
12 Emerson's Journal for 1845, p. 130.
13 Emerson's Journals, Vol. V, p. 334.
14 Emerson's Journals, Vol. VII, p. 241.
15 Biblioteca Indica, Vol. XV, translated by E. Roer,
Calcutta, 1853..202
16 Emerson's Works (Centenary Edition), Vol. II, p. 270.
17 Emerson's Journals, Vol. X, p. 162.
18 Article: "Emerson's Debt to the Orient," Arthur
E. Christy, The Monist,
January, 1928.
19 In 1854 a most significant fact was recorded in New
England history. A young
Englishman, Thomas Cholmondeley, friend of Arthur Hugh
Clough, and nephew of
Bishop Heber, came to Concord with letters of introduction
to Emerson. The
latter sent him to board at Mrs. John Thoreau's. A short
time after
Cholmondeley's return to England, Henry Thoreau received
forty-four volumes of
Hindu literature as a gift from the young nobleman. Of
these, twenty-three were
bequeathed to Emerson at Thoreau's death. The list contained
the names of such
eminent translators as H. H. Milman, H. H. Wilson, M. E.
Burnouff and Sir
William Jones. The books were the texts from the Vedas, the
Vishnu Purana, the
Mahabarhata, with the Bhagavad Gita. Tradition has it that
Emerson died with a
copy of the Bhagavad Gita (said to have been one of three
copies in the country
at the time) in his faltering grasp. It is known that he
read, besides, numerous
volumes of Persian poetry, translations of Confucius and
other Chinese
philosophers, by James Ligge, Marshman and David Collier,
and books on Hindu
mathematics and mythology. The poem "Brahma" first
appeared in the Journal of
July, 1856, and in the Atlantic Monthly, for November, 1867.
He did not receive
Thoreau's bequest until 1852, but it requires no stretch of
imagination to
presume that the two friends had access to each other's
libraries in the
interval between 1854 and 1862.
20 This difference between the two cults may perhaps be best
depicted by quoting
the words used in the author's presence by a woman of
intelligence who had
founded two Christian Science churches and had been notably
successful as a
healing practitioner, but who later united with the
Theosophical Society. She
said: "Christian Science had rather well satisfied my
spiritual needs, but had
totally starved my intellect." Her experience is
doubtless typical of that of
many others, in whom, after the first burst of sensational
interest in healing
has receded, the yearning for a satisfactory philosophy of
life and the cosmos
surged uppermost again.
21 It has been conservatively estimated that in 1852 there
were three hundred
mediumistic circles in Philadelphia. The number of mediums
in the United States
in 1853 was thirty thousand. In 1855 there were two and a
half million
Spiritualists in the land, with an increase of three hundred
each year. The rate
of increase far outran those of the Lutheran and Methodist
denominations. An
interesting feature of this rapid spread of the movement was
its political
significance and results. Not inherently concerned with
politics, its devotees
mostly adopted strong anti-slavery tenets. Judge Edmonds, an
eminent jurist,
converted to Spiritualism by his (at first skeptical)
investigations of it,
asserted that the Spiritualist vote came near to carrying
the election of 1856,
and actually did carry that of 1860 for the North against
the Democratic party.
Another most interesting side-light is the fact that the
sweep of Spiritualistic
excitement redeemed thousands of atheists to an acceptance
of religious
verities. (For these and other interesting data see Howitt's
History of the
Supernatural, Vol. II.)
22 Spiritualists say that Lincoln was eventually moved to
emancipate the slaves
by his reception of a spirit message through Hattie Colburn,
a medium who came
to see him about a furlough for her son. Horace Greeley was
favorably impressed.203
by the evidence presented. And a later President, McKinley,
maintained a deep
concern in the phenomena, along with his powerful political
manager, Senator
Mark Hanna, who seldom undertook a move of any consequence
without first
consulting a medium, Mrs. Gutekunst, to whom, for purposes
of ready
availability, he had given a residence in his home. Senators
and Cabinet members
were by no means immune.
23 Others prominent in the movement at the time were
Governor N. P. Tallmadge,
of Wisconsin, Rev. Adin Ballou, J. P. Davis and Benjamin
Coleman; and Profs.
Bush, Mapes, Gray, and Channing from leading universities.
Mr. Epes Sargeant, of
Boston, added prestige to the cult. A Dr. Gardner, of
Boston, and the Unitarian
Theodore Parker gave testimony as to the beneficent
influence exerted by the
Spiritualistic faith.
24 By strange and fortuitous circumstances he became the
guest of the Emperor of
the French, of the King of Holland, of the Czar of Russia,
and of many lesser
princes. His demonstrations before these grandees were
extensions of the
phenomena occurring in his youth. See Howitt's History of
the Supernatural, Vol.
II, pp. 222 ff.
25 Howitt's History of the Supernatural, Vol. II, p. 225.
26 He published his The Great Harmonia (Boston 1850); The
Philosophy of
Spiritual Intercourse (New York, 1851); The Penetralia
(Boston, 1856); The
Present Age and Inner Life (New York, 1853); and The Magic Staff
(Boston, 1858).
He edited a periodical, The Herald of Progress.
27 Howitt's The History of the Supernatural, Vol. II, p.
228.
28 That there was much very real theosophy among the early
German Pietists who
settled north and west of Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania
colony is indicated
by the following extract from The German Sectarians of
Pennsylvania, by Julius
Friedrich Sachse (Vol. I, pp. 457 ff.). He says: "Thus
far but little attention
has been given by writers on Pennsylvania history to the
influences exercised by
the various mystical, theosophical and cabbalistic societies
and fraternities of
Europe in the evangelization of this Province and in
reclaiming the German
settlers from the rationalism with which they were
threatened by their contact
with the English Quakers.
"Labadie's teachings; Boehme's visions; the true
Rosicrucianism of the original
Kelpius party; the Philadelphian Society, whose chief
apostle was Jane Leade;
the fraternity which taught the restitution of all things;
the mystical
fraternity led by Dr. Julian Wilhelm Petersen and his wife
Eleanor von Merlau-both
members of the Frankfort community-all found a foothold upon
the soil of
Penn's colony and exercised a much larger share in the
development of this
country than is accorded to them. It has even been claimed
by some superficial
writers and historians of the day that there was no strain
of mysticism whatever
in the Ephrata Community, or, in fact, connected with any of
the early German
movements in Pennsylvania. Such a view is refuted by the
writings of Kelpius,
Beissel, Miller, and many others who then lived, sought the
Celestial Bridegroom
and awaited the millennium which they earnestly believed to
be near.
"With the advent of the Moravian Brethren in
Pennsylvania the number of these
mystical orders was increased by the introduction of two
others, viz., The Order
of the Passion of Jesus (Der Orden des Leidens Jesu), of
which Count Zinzendorf
was Grand Commander, and the Order of the Mustard Seed (Der
Senfkorn Orden).".204
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER III HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND PSYCHIC CAREER
1 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P.
Sinnett (Theosophical
Publishing Society, London, 1913), p. 35. See also footnote
at bottom of page
155, in Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (New
York, Frederick A.
Stokes Co.,
2 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P.
Sinnett, pp. 39-40.
3 Vol. II, p. 599.
4 Her recital of marvels seen in Tibet corresponds in the
main with similar
narratives related by the Abbι Huc in the first edition of
his Recollections of
Travel in Tartary, Tibet and China. Mr. Sinnett makes the
statement, without
giving his evidence, that the "miracles" related
by the Abbι in his first
edition were expurgated by Catholic authority in the later
editions of the work.
5 Madame Blavatsky later verified the long distance
phenomenon by receiving in
writing, in response to an inquiry by mail, a letter from
the Rumanian friend
stating that at the identical time of the Shaman's
concentration she had
swooned, but dreamed she saw Madame Blavatsky in a tent in a
wild country among
menacing tribes, and that she had communicated with her.
Madame Blavatsky states
that the friend's astral form was visible in the tent.
6 In 1873 while at the Eddy farmhouse with her new friend
Col. Olcott, she
revealed to him this
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER in her life, proving it by showing him where her
left arm had been broken in two places by a saber stroke,
and having him feel a
musket ball in her right shoulder and another in her leg,
revealing also a scar
just below the heart where she had been stabbed by a
stiletto.
7 It must have been about this time that Madame did some
traveling in an
altogether different capacity than occult research. She is
known by her family
to have made tours in Italy and Russia under a pseudonym,
giving piano concerts.
She had been a pupil of Moscheles, and when with her father
in London as a young
girl she had played at a charity concert with Madame Clara
Schumann and Madame
Arabella Goddard in a piece for three pianos.
8 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P.
Sinnett, p. 125.
9 An incident highly characteristic of her nature marked her
coming to this
country, and her followers would hardly pardon our omitting
it. Having purchased
her steamer ticket, she was about to board the vessel when
her attention was
attracted to a peasant woman weeping bitterly on the wharf.
Her quick sympathies
touched, Madame Blavatsky approached her and inquired the
trouble. She soon
gathered that a "sharp" had sold the woman a
worthless ticket, and that she was
stranded without funds. Madame Blavatsky's finances had
barely sufficed to
procure her own passage, she having sent a dispatch to
Russia instructing her
father to forward her additional money in New York. In the
emergency she did not
hesitate. Going to the office of the Company, she arranged
to exchange her cabin
ticket for two steerage ones, and packed the grateful
emigrant on board along
with her.-See Old Diary Leaves, by Col. H. S. Olcott (New
York and London, G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1895), pp. 28-29.
10 Old Diary Leaves, by Col. H. S. Olcott, Vol. I, p. 440.
11 Col. Olcott (Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 440) states
that during this period
of her own need she held in custody the sum of about 23,000
francs, which she
later told him her "guardians" had charged her to
deliver a person in the United
States whose definite location would be given her after her
arrival here. The.205
order came after a time, and she went to Buffalo, was given
a name and street
number,
where she delivered the money without question to a man who
was on the point of
committing suicide. It was understood that she had been made
the agent of
rectifying a great wrong done him.
12 Mr. O'Sullivan rallied her about her possession of so
easy a road to wealth.
"No, indeed," she answered, "'tis but a
psychological trick. We who have the
power of doing this, dare not use it for our own or any
other's interests, any
more than you would dare commit the forgery by methods of
the counterfeiters. It
would be stealing from the government in either
case."-Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I,
p. 435.
13 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I., p. 106.
14 Mr. W. Q. Judge as her counsel and the decree was granted
on May 25, 1878.
Col. Olcott had retained the original papers in the case.
15 Old Diary Letters, Vol. I, p. 417.
16 Ibid., p. 4.
17 Published by The Constables, London, 1910.
18 The Arena, April, 1895.
19 Quoted in Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 4 (footnote), from
a letter written by
her entitled "The Knout" to the R. P. Journal of
March 16, 1878.
20 Mr. Sinnett (Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VI)
emphasizes the fact that she was about this time in a
transition state from
passive mediumship to active control over her phenomena. He
doubtless wishes to
make this matter clear in view of its important bearing upon
the divergence
between Spiritualism and Theosophy which was accentuated
when the latter put
forth claims somewhat at variance with the usual theses
presented by the former.
21 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, p. 61.
22 Ibid., p. 72.
23 In Russian, "little hare."
24 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, p. 116.
25 Ibid., p. 120
26 Ibid., p. 120
27 Ibid., p. 128
28 Ibid., p. 127
29 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 36. In this work Col. Olcott
undertakes to
classify the various types of phenomena produced by Madame
Blavatsky.
30 Ibid., Vol. I,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER III, pp. 40 ff..206
31 Theosophists are so much in the habit of referring to
their leader by her
three initials that we may be pardoned for falling into the
same convenient
usage at times.
32 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 380.
33 Mr. Sinnett devotes some pages of his little volume, The
Occult World, to a
critical examination of every conceivable possibility of this
incident's being
other than it ostensibly was, and he is unable to find a
loophole for the
admission of any theory of deception. All the witnesses to
the event made
affidavit to the effect of its evident genuineness. The
reader is referred to
his analysis of the case, to be found on pages 64-71 in the
work just mentioned.
For close scrutiny of the other events of the same period
the same volume should
be consulted.
34 Vlesevold Solovyoff, who afterwards sought to discredit
Madame Blavatsky's
genuine status, himself witnessed this scene. In fact he
wrote out his own
statement of the occurrence and sent it for publication to
the St. Petersburg
Rebus, which printed it on July 1, 1884, over his signature.
He closes that
account with the following paragraph: "The
circumstances under which the
phenomenon occurred in its smallest details, carefully
checked by myself, do not
leave in me the smallest doubt as to its genuineness and
reality. Deception or
fraud in this particular case are really out of the question."
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER IV FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY
1 It seems that she had been in Peru and Brazil in 1857,
according to her later
statement to A. P. Sinnett as found on page 154 of the
Letters of H. P.
Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. A sentence in Vol. I, of Isis
Unveiled makes mention
of her personal knowledge of great underground labyrinths in
Peru.
2 Not assuredly of the sιance-room type. She is obviously
using the term here in
the wider sense that it came to have in her larger
Theosophic system, as
expounded in this
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER.
3 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 12.
4 Ibid., p. 13.
5 Ibid., p. 68.
6 Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, herself a medium and among the
foremost
Spiritualists of her day-also a charter member of the
Theosophical Society-made
a statement to the same effect to Col. Olcott in 1875. See
Old Diary Leaves,
Vol. I, p. 83.
7 Quoted in William Kingsland's The Real H. P. Blavatsky (J.
M. Watkins, London,
1928), p. 123.
8 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (New York, Frederick A.
Stokes Co., 1924), p.
289.
9 The Theosophist, Vol. I, 1879.
10 Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 13..207
11 Ibid., p. 53.
12 Ibid., p. 489.
13 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 586.
14 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 110.
15 Page 27.
16 That H. P. B. was by no means alone in predicating the
existence of other
than human spirits denizening the astral world is shown by
Col. Olcott, who (Old
Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 438), cites Mrs. Britten's
statement printed in an
article in The Banner of Light, as follows: "I know of
the existence of other
than human spirits and have seen apparitions of spiritual or
elementary
existences evoked by cabalistic words and practices."
17 Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 636. 18 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 67
19 Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching (London, T. F. Unwin,
Ltd., 1919).
20 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 101.
21 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 119. From notes taken at the
meeting by Mrs.
Emma Hardinge Britten, and published a day or two later in a
New York daily.
22 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 119.
23 He was in active command of the Army of the Potomac at
the Battle of
Gettysburg, following the death of General Reynolds on the
1st of July until the
arrival of General Meade.
24 He devised the modern game of baseball.
25 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 399.
26 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 400.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER V ISIS UNVEILED
1 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 203.
2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 33.
3 The term Chaldean in these titles is thought by modern
scholars to veil an
actual Greek origin of the texts in question. The existence
of Chaldea and
Chaldeans appears to be regarded as highly uncertain. Of the
Chaldeans Madame
Blavatsky says in The Theosophical Glossary:
"Chaldeans, or Kasdim. At first a
tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They were the
savants, the magians of
Babylonia, astrologers and diviners." Of the Chaldean
Book of Numbers she says:
"A work which contains all that is found in the Zohar
of Simeon Ben-Jochai and
much more. . . . It contains all the fundamental principles
taught in the Jewish
Kabbalistic works, but none of their blinds. It is very rare
indeed, there being
perhaps only two or three copies extant and these in private
hands.".208
4 Scholars have thrown doubt on the Persian authorship of
this book. Madame
Blavatsky in the Glossary describes it as "a very
ancient Persian work called
the Book of Shet. It speaks of the thirteen Zoroasters and
is very mystical."
5 It is clear that Madame Blavatsky was not a literary
person before the epoch
of the writing of Isis. She herself, in the last article for
Lucifer that she
wrote before her death in 1891, entitled My Books, wrote:
1. When I came to America in 1873 I had not spoken
English-which I had
learned in my childhood colloquially-for over thirty years.
I could understand
when I read it, but could hardly speak the language.
2 I had never been at any college, and what I knew I had
taught myself; I
had never pretended to any scholarship in the sense of
modern research; I had
then hardly read any scientific European works, knew little
of Western
philosophy and sciences. The little which I had studied and
learned of these
disgusted me with its materialism, its limitations, narrow
cut-and-dried spirit
of dogmatism and air of superiority over the philosophies
and sciences of
antiquity.
3. Until 1874 I had never written one word in English, nor
had I published
any work in any language. Therefore:--
4. I had not the least idea of literary rules. The art of
writing books,
of preparing them for print and publication, reading and
correcting proofs, were
so many closed secrets to me.
5. When I started to write that which later developed into
Isis Unveiled,
I had no more idea than the man in the moon what would come
of it. I had no
plan; . . . I knew that I had to write it, that was all.-Old
Diary Leaves, Vol.
I, p. 223.
6 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 208.
7 Ibid., p. 208.
8 Ibid., p. 211. The Countess Wachtmeister testified to
similar productions of
pages of manuscript in connection with the writing of The
Secret Doctrine ten
years later.
9 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I. p. 239.
10 Ibid., p. 240.
11. Ibid., p. 210.
12 Published in The Path, Vol. IX, p. 300.
13 The Path, Vol. IX, p. 266
14 Letter quoted in Mr. Sinnett's Incidents in the Life of
Madame Blavatsky, p.
205..209
15 It is of some interest to see how it was received in
1877. The Boston
Transcript says: "It must be acknowledged that she is a
remarkable woman, who
has read more, seen more and thought more than most wise
men. Her work abounds
in quotations from a dozen different languages, not for the
purpose of vain
display of erudition, but to substantiate her peculiar
views. Her pages are
garnished with footnotes, establishing as her authorities
some of the
profoundest writers of the past. To a large class of readers
this remarkable
work will prove of absorbing interest . . . it demands the
earnest attention of
thinkers and merits an analytic reading."
From the New York Independent came the following: "The
appearance of erudition
is stupendous. References to and quotations from the most
unknown and obscure
writers in all languages abound; interspersed with allusions
to writers of the
highest repute, which have evidently been more than skimmed
through."
This from the New York World: "An extremely readable
and exhaustive essay upon
the paramount importance of reλstablishing the Hermetic
philosophy in a world
which blindly believes that it has outgrown it."
Olcott's own paper, The New York Daily Graphic, said:
"A marvelous book, both in
matter and manner of treatment. Some idea may be formed of
the rarity and extent
of its contents when the index alone comprises 50 pages, and
we venture nothing
in saying that such an index of subjects was never before
compiled by any human
being."
The New York Tribune confined itself to saying: "The
present work is the fruit
of her remarkable course of education and amply confirms her
claims to the
character of an adept in secret science, and even to the
rank of an hierophant
in the exposition of its mystic lore."
And the New York Herald: "It is easy to forecast the
reception of this book.
With its striking peculiarities, its audacity, its
versatility and the
prodigious variety of subjects which it notices and handles,
it is one of the
remarkable productions of the century."
16 Appendix to V. S. Solovyoff's A Modern Priestess of Isis
(London, 1895), p.
354.
17 Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 165.
18 Ibid., Vol. I, p. xiv.
19 Ibid., Vol. I, p. xlii.
20 Ibid., Vol. I, p. xiv.
21 Ibid., Vol. I, Preface, p. 1.
22 Perhaps the following excerpt states the intent of Isis
more specifically:
"What we desire to prove is that underlying every
ancient popular religion was
the same ancient wisdom-doctrine, one and identical,
professed and practiced by
the initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its
existence and
importance. To ascertain its origin and precise age in which
it was matured, is
now beyond human possibility. A single glance, however, is
enough to assure one
that it could not have attained the marvelous perfection in
which we find it.210
pictured to us in the relics of the various esoteric systems,
except after a
succession of ages. A philosophy so profound, a moral code
so ennobling, and
practical results so conclusive and so uniformly
demonstrable, is not the growth
of a generation. . . . Myriads of the brightest human
intellects must have
reflected upon the laws of nature before this ancient
doctrine had taken
concrete shape. The proofs of this identity of fundamental
doctrine in the old
religions are found in the prevalence of a system of
initiation; in the secret
sacerdotal castes, who had the guardianship of mystical
words of power, and a
public display of a phenomenal control over natural forces,
indicating
association with preter-human beings. Every approach to the
Mysteries of all
these nations was guarded with the same jealous care, and in
all, the penalty of
death was inflicted upon initiates of any degree who
divulged secrets entrusted
to them."
23 Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 281.
24 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 36.
25 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 14.
26 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 243.
27 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 62.
28 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 184. Theosophists appear to be in the
habit of using the
terms Akasha and Astral Light more or less synonymously. In
the Glossary Madame
Blavatsky defines Akasha (Akasa, Akaz) as "the subtle
supersensuous spiritual
essence which pervades all spaces; the primordial substance
erroneously
identified with Ether. But it is to Ether what Spirit is to
Matter, or Atma to
Kamarupa. It is in fact the Universal Space in which lies
inherent the eternal
Ideation of the Universe in its ever-changing aspects on the
plane of matter and
objectivity. This power is the . . . same anima mundi on the
higher plane as the
astral light is on the lower."
29 Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p . 271 ff.
30 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 210.
31 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 218.
32 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 216.
33 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 218.
34 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 493.
35 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 406.
36 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 431.
37 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 337.
38 Quoted in Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 106..211
39 Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 98.
40 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 32.
41 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 34.
42 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 121
43 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 139.
44 A wealth of curious citations is drawn up behind these
positions. The whole
Passion Week story is stated to be the reproduction of the
drama of initiation
into the Mysteries, and not to have taken place in
historical fact. And
practically every other
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER of Christ's life story is paralleled in the
lives of the twenty or more "World Saviors,"
including Thoth, Orpheus, Vyasa,
Buddha, Krishna, Dionysus, Osiris, Zoroaster, Zagreus,
Apollonius, and others.
45 Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 406.
46 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 38.
47 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 227.
48 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 639.
49 Dr. Annie Besant: Esoteric Christianity, p. 8.
50 E.g., cf. C. W. Leadbeater: The Christian Creed.
51 Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 535.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VI THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR LETTERS
1 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, of June, 1893.
2 A. P. Sinnett: The Occult World, p. 1.
3 Ibid., p. 14. More detailed requirements in the way of
preparation for
Adeptship will be set forth when we undertake the general
critique of the occult
life, in
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XI.
4 In 1883 he published the general outlines of the cosmology
involved in their
communications in a work called Esoteric Buddhism.
5 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 24.
6 Ibid., p. 57.
7 Ibid., p. 52.
8 Ibid., p. 56..212
9 Ibid., p. 141.
10 Ibid., p. 142.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 71.
14 Ibid., p. 137.
15 Ibid., p. 167. "En passant to show you that not only
were not the 'Races'
invented by us, but that they are a cardinal dogma with the
Lama Buddhists, and
with all who study our esoteric doctrines, I send you an
explanation on a page
or two of Rhys Davids' Buddhism,--otherwise
incomprehensible, meaningless and
absurd. It is written with the special permission of the
Chohan (my Master) and-for
your benefit. No Orientalist has ever suspected the truths
contained in it,
and-you are the first Western man (outside Tibet) to whom it
is now explained."-The
Mahatma Letters, p. 158.
16 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 158.
17 Ibid., p. 52.
18 Devachanna would be equivalent to the Sanskrit
devachhanna, hidden (abode) of
the gods. On page 373 of the Mahatma Letters the Master K.H.
writes: "The
meaning of the terms 'Devachan' and 'Deva-Loka,' is
identical; 'chan' and 'loka'
equally signifying place or abode. Deva is a word too
indiscriminately used in
Eastern writings, and is at times merely a blind." Deva
may be roughly
translated as "the shining one" or god. Devachan
written alternatively Deva-Chan)
is thus used to signify "the abode of the gods."
Theosophists interchange
it with our term "heaven-world."
19 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 179.
20 Ibid., p. 197.
21 Ibid., p. 187.
22 Ibid., p. 187.
23 Ibid., p. 183.
24 Ibid., p. 194.
25 Ibid., p. 241
26 Ibid., p. 255.
27 Maya, a word frequent in several schools of Indian
Philosophy, commonly used
to denote the illusory or merely phenomenal character of
man's experience which
he gains through his sense equipment. It is often identified
with avidya or
ajnana and contrasted with Brahmavidya or knowledge of truth
and reality, in
their unconditioned form..213
28 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 274.
29 Ibid., p. 276.
30 Ibid., p. 281.
31 Ibid., p. 305.
32 Ibid., p. 322.
33 Ibid., p. 337
34 The terms Purusha and Prakriti are employed in the
Sankhya school of Indian
philosophy to designate spirit and matter as the two
opposing phases of the one
life when in active manifestation.
35 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 348.
36 Of the Dhyan Chohans Madame Blavatsky speaks in the
Glossary as follows: "The
Lords of Light," the highest gods, answering to the
Roman Catholic Archangels,
the divine intelligences charged with the supervision of
Kosmos. Dhyan is a
Sanskrit term signifying "wisdom" or "illumination,"
but the name Chohans seems
to be more obscure in origin, and is probably Tibetan, used
in the general sense
of "Lords" of "Masters."
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VII STORM, WRECK, AND REBUILDING
1 The official reports of the S.P.R. are to be found in Vol.
III, pages 201 to
400 of the Proceedings of the S.P.R. A very adequate review
of the entire affair
is made by William Kingsland in the text and appendix of his
recent work, The
Real H. P. Blavatsky (M. Watkins, London, 1928). Partial
accounts are found in
many other works, as for instance, The Theosophical
Movement.
2 It was from some three hundred native students of this
same Christian College
that Madame Blavatsky received a welcoming ovation on her
return from Paris to
India, and was given a testimonial of their assured faith in
her lofty motives.
3 In The Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. III, pp. 201 to
400.
4 Further distrust of the Coulomb's charges against H.P.B.
is justifiable in
view of the statement given on June 5, 1879 by Madame
Coulomb to the Ceylon
Times, of which she sent the subject of her remarks a copy.
She wrote: "I have
known this lady for the last eight years and I must say the
truth that there is
nothing against her character. We lived in the same town,
and on the contrary
she was considered one of the cleverest ladies of the age.
Madame Blavatsky is a
musician, a painter, a linguist, an author, and I may say
that very few ladies
and indeed few gentlemen, have a knowledge of things as
general as Madame
Blavatsky."
5 It is in this article that Madame Blavatsky gives out that
important
declaration of hers, that as soon as the sincere aspirant
steps upon the Path.214
leading to the higher initiations, his accumulated Karma is
thrown upon him, in
condensed form. The determination to pursue the occult life
is therefore often
spoken of as involving the "challenging of one's
Karma."
6 He was the instigator of the "Sun Libel Case,"
which will be outlined in
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XII.
7 The Theosophical Movement, p. 132.
8 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. IV.
9 Found in the Appendix to The Mahatma Letters to A. P.
Sinnett, pp. 480-481.
10 Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (New York:
Frederick A. Stokes
Co.), p. 194.
11 The Path, Vol. IX, p. 300.
12 Ibid., p. 266.
13 The Countess Wachtmeister herself went to the pains of
verifying a quotation
already written out by Madame Blavatsky, which the latter said
would be found in
a volume in the Bodleian Library. She found the excerpt to
be correct as to
wording, page,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER, and title of the book quoted. She adds that Miss Emily
Kislingbury, a devoted member of the Society, verified a
quotation from Cardinal
Weisman's Lectures on Science and Religion.
14 Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine,
Appendix, p. 105
ff.
15 Ibid., Appendix, p. 89 ff.
16 The experience of Mr. C. Carter Blake, a scientist is
pertinent on this
point. He asserts that her learning was extraordinary, in
consideration of her
lack of early education and her want of books. He testifies
that she knew more
than he did on his own lines of anthropology, specifying her
abstruse knowledge
on the subject of the Naulette jaw. He says: "Page 744
in the Second Volume of
the Secret Doctrine refers to facts which she could not
easily have gathered
from any published book." She had declared that the
raised beaches of Tarija
were pliocene, when Blake argued that they were pleistocene.
She was afterwards
proved correct. On page 755 of Vol. II, she mentions the
fossil footprints at
Carson, Indiana. Says Blake: "When Madame Blavatsky
spoke to me of the
footprints I did not know of their existence, and Mr. G. W.
Bloxam, Assistant
Secretary of the Anthropological Institute, afterwards told
me that a pamphlet
on the subject in the library had never been out. Madame
Blavatsky certainly had
sources of information (I don't say what) transcending the
knowledge of experts
on their own lines."-Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky
and The Secret Doctrine,
Appendix, pp. 117 ff.
17 Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine,
Appendix, pp. 96
ff.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VIII THE SECRET DOCTRINE.215
1 The word Dzyan presents some etymological difficulties.
Madame Blavatsky in
the Glossary states that Dzyan (also written Dzyn and Dzen)
is a corruption of
the Sanskrit Dhyana, meaning meditation. In Tibetan,
learning is called Dzin.
2 This document (spelled variously Koumboum, Kumbum,
Kounboum, etc.) was a
Buddhist text connected with the Koumboum monastery, in
Tibet. On the monastery
grounds grew the sacred Tree of Tibet, the 'tree of the ten
thousand images,' as
Huc describes it. . . . "Tradition has it that it grew
out of the hair of
Tsonka-pa, who was buried on that spot. . . . In the words
of the Abbι Huc, who
lived several months with another missionary, named Gabet,
near this phenomenal
tree: 'Each of its leaves in opening, bears either a letter
or a religious
sentence, written in sacred characters, and these letters
are, of their kind, of
such a perfection that the type-foundries of Didot contain
nothing to excel
them. Open the leaves, which vegetation is about to unroll,
and you will there
discover, on the point of appearing, the letters or the
distinct words which are
the marvel of this unique tree. Turn your attention from the
plant to the bark
of its branches, and new characters will meet your eyes! Do
not allow your
interest to flag; raise the layers of this bark and still
other characters will
show themselves below those whose beauty has surprised you.
For, do not fancy
that these superposed layers repeat the same printing. No,
quite the contrary;
for each lamina you lift presents to view its distinct type.
How, then, can we
suspect jugglery? I have done my best in that direction to
discover the
slightest trace of human trick, and my baffled mind could
not retain the
slightest suspicion.' Yet promptly the kind French Abbι
suspects-the Devil."-Quoted
from Madame Blavatsky, article Kounboum in The Theosophical
Glossary.
3 The Dzungarians were a section of the Mongolian Empire at its
height, whose
name now remains only as the name of a mountain range. They
have disappeared
geographically.
4 Page vii.
5 The Secret Doctrine, Introductory, p. xxxvii.
6 Ibid., p. xxxviii.
7 Pralaya, as given in Sanskrit dictionaries, means
"dissolution, reabsorption,
destruction, annihilation, death"; especially the
destruction of the whole world
at the end of a Kalpa; also "fainting, loss of sense of
consciousness; sleep."
It apparently is derived from the Sanskrit stem li, one of
whose meanings is to
disappear or vanish. Madame Blavatsky describes Pralaya in
the Glossary as "a
period of obscuration or repose-planetary, cosmic or
universal-the opposite of
Manvantara."
8 Manvantara (Manu plus antara, between) is described as the
period or age of a
Manu. It comprised a period of 4,320,000 human years,
supposedly the period
intervening between two Manus.
9 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 75.
10 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 83.
11 The word Pitris commonly means "fathers, ancestors,
progenitors." Madame
Blavatsky, however, on the authority of her Mahatmic
instructors, employs the
term in a wider sense. She uses it in a racial sense. In the
Glossary she speaks
of the Pitris as "the ancestors or creators of mankind.
They are of the seven.216
classes, three of which are incorporeal. In popular theology
they are said to be
created from Brahma's side. . . . The Pitris are not the
ancestors of the
present living men, but those of the human kind or Adamic
races; the spirits of
the human races, which on the great scale of descending
evolution preceded our
races of men, and they were physically, as well as
spiritually, far superior to
our modern pigmies. In Manava Dharma Shastra they are called
the Lunar
Ancestors."
12 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 235.
13 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 198.
14 The term Atma-Buddhi-Manas is the Theosophical manner of
designating the
"higher triplicity" in man, the union of the three
higher principles which
constitutes him an individual Ego. If one were to say, man
is composed of mind,
soul and spirit in his higher nature, it would roughly
approximate the
Theosophic description. Sanskrit dictionaries give Atma as
meaning, "breath,
life, soul"; Buddhi as meaning "intelligence,
reason, intellect, mind,
discernment, judgment, the power of forming and retaining
conceptions and
general notions; perception, apprehension,
understanding"; and Manas as "the
principle of mind or spirit."
15 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 103.
16 Ibid., p. 246.
17 "The fourth dimension of space" enters the
discussion at this point. The
phrase should be, says the writer, "the fourth
dimension of matter in space,"
since obviously space has no dimensions. The dimensions, or
characteristics of
matter are those determinations which the five senses of man
give to it. Matter
has extension, color, motion (molecular), taste, and smell;
and it is the
development of the next sense in man-normal
clairvoyance-that will give matter
its sixth characteristic, which she calls permeability.
Extension-which covers
all concepts of dimension in our world-is limited to three
directions. Only when
man's perceptive faculties unfold will there be a real
fourth dimension.
18 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 277.
19 Quoted in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 295.
20 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 311. Quoted from H. Grattan Guinness,
F. R. G. S.: The
Approaching End of the Age.
21 The races of "intelligent" animals and
semi-human apes will then be advanced
to our present station.
22 Ignatius Donnelley endeavored to substantiate the claims
for its existence in
an elaborate work, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, some
sixty or seventy years
ago. By tracing numberless similarities in the languages,
customs, and ideas of
Old World civilizations with those of Central America he adduced
a formidable
body of evidence pointing to the former existence of a
linking area. Madame
Blavatsky counts more heavily than science has done upon
this authority.
Soundings have revealed the presence of a great raised
plateau on the ocean
floor at about one-third the depth of the general main,
extending from Northern
Brazil toward Ireland.
23 She assigns a tentative date of 78,000 years ago for the
erection of the
great pyramid of Cheops, reaching this conclusion from
reasoning and.217
calculations based on the Dendera Zodiac, which indicates
that three sidereal
years (25,686 years each) had passed since the pole star was
in a position
suggested by the various features of the great pile's
construction.
25 The sexless (First) race was Adam solus. Then came the
Second Race; Adam-Eve,
or Jah-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the Third, or
the "separating
hermaphrodite," Cain and Abel, who produced the Fourth,
Seth-Enos, etc.-The
Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 134.
26 Kriyasakti means "capacity to act, a sakti or
supernatural power as appearing
in actions." By Madame Blavatsky the term is taken as
meaning creative power or
capability of doing work.
27 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 517.
28 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 328.
29 Ibid., p. 330.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER IX EVOLUTION, REBIRTH AND KARMA
1 "Growth is regarded as having an end instead of being
and end. . . . In
reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save
more growth."-John
Dewey: Democracy and Education.
2 Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia.
3 See Ogden and Richards, The Meaning of Meaning.
4 Article in The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1926.
5 The instantaneous (from our point of view) retrospect of
our whole past life
in elaborate detail recounted by thousands of persons who
had drowned or
suffocated or fallen or been struck a blow, and lived to
tell the tale, are, say
Theosophists, instances of the vision falling this side of
death. Nor is the
phenomenon wanting with persons who pass out peacefully on
their beds. The
rapturous prevision of heaven usually includes elements of a
life review.
6 Persons who have slept but ten seconds of clock time have
told of the richness
and vividness of this type of consciousness, in which the
events of a lifetime
are reviewed, weighed, and morally judged in a moment.
7 On page 646 of Vol. I, our seeress makes what looks like a
prophecy of the
World War of 1914: "Europe in general is threatened
with, or rather is on the
eve of, a cataclysm which her own cycle of racial Karma has
led her to."
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER X ESOTERIC WISOM AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE
1 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 650.
2 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 654.
3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 170..218
4 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 262.
5 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 478.
6 A. S. Eddington: The Nature of the Physical World
(Cambridge, 1928). Madame
Blavatsky had long ago hypothecated this dual nature of
light. See The Secret
Doctrine, passim.
7 Section XI of the Introduction to the Principia.
8 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 517.
9 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 520.
10 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 541. Prof. Millikan's recent
conclusions as to the constant
refueling of the spheres by the influx of atomic structures
"fixated" out of the
ether of space may perhaps be regarded as in some sense
corroborative of Madame
Blavatsky's statement on this subject.
11 The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 547.
12 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 631.13 The magazine Theosophy,
published monthly by The
United Lodge of Theosophists, runs a "Lookout
Section" in which for fifteen or
more years comment has been made upon the argument of
current scientific
discovery with Madame Blavatsky's systemology.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XI THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL PRACTICE
1 Yajnavidya in Sanskrit means "knowledge of (or
through) sacrifice;" but in the
Vedanta and the Upanishads it ranks low in the scheme of
wisdom. Madame
Blavatsky in the Glossary gives Yajna as meaning
"sacrifice" and describes it as
"one of the forms of Akasa within which the mystic Word
(or its underlying
'sound') calls it into existence. Pronounced by the
Priest-Initiate or Yogi this
word receives creative powers and is communicated as an
impulse on the
terrestrial plane through a trained Will-Power."
2 In Sanskrit mahavidya means "great or exalted
knowledge;" it ranks high in the
scheme of wisdom. Madame Blavatsky calls it the great
esoteric science and says
that the highest Initiates alone are in possession of it. It
embraces almost
universal knowledge.
3 In Sanskrit this term means "knowledge to be hidden,
esoteric knowledge,"
especially of the use of incantations and spells. Madame
Blavatsky so describes
it in the Glossary.
4 Atma (Sanskrit "breath, soul") and Vidya. The
term connotes knowledge of the
Soul or Supreme Spirit in man. This is in agreement with
Madame Blavatsky's use
of the term.
5 "The knowledge of them is obligatory in that School
the teachings of which are
accepted by many Theosophists."-From the Preface.
6 The term Yoga is commonly taken to mean union and its root
is the same as that
of our word yoke. However, Sanskrit dictionaries give other
meanings of the
word, several of which have relevance to its use to denote a
system of spiritual
practice. So far as the use of the word in Indian philosophy
goes, it is a.219
matter of dispute whether yoga is union of the individual
soul with Brahma or
the subjection of the human senses and emotions. Madame
Blavatsky characterizes
it as the practice of meditation as leading to spiritual
liberation.
7 In Sanskrit jivatman means "the living or personal or
individual soul" as
distinguished from paramatma, the universal soul. By
Theosophists, too, it is
applied only to the individual.
8 Raja Yoga is thus characterized in The Light of the Soul,
a commentary on the
Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali, by Alice A. Bailey: "Raja
Yoga stands by itself and
is the king science of them all; it is the summation of all
the others, it is
the climax of the work of development in the human kingdom.
It is the science of
the mind and the purposeful will, and brings the higher of
man's sheaths under
the subjection of the inner Ruler. This science coφrdinates
the entire lower
threefold man, forcing him into a position where he is
nothing but the vehicle
for the soul, or the God within. It includes the other Yogas
and profits by
their achievements. It synthesizes the work of evolution and
crowns man as
king."
9 Alice A. Bailey, The Light of the Soul, p. 164.
10 Page 65.
11 Ibid., p. 60.
12 The Light of the Soul, p. 234.
13 Ibid., p. 241.
14 Bhagavad Gita, p. 177.
15 John Ruskin, English art critic and economist, labored to
impress this theory
on modern attention.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XII LATER THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY
1 The material of this
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER has been drawn largely from the anonymous work,
The Theosophical Movement, the statements in which are
fortified throughout with
an abundance of documentary data, and from the Theosophic
periodical literature
of the years covered by the narrative, as well as in a
number of instances from
the author's first-hand acquaintance with the events
narrated.
2 Evidence arrived at by comparison of dates and known facts
as to Madame
Blavatsky's slight acquaintance with Miss Collins before
1887, and the testimony
of prefatory remarks in each of the four books in question,
leads to the
definite conclusion that Miss Collins did herself ascribe
the source of her
books to Mahatmic or other high dictation, and that she had
taken this position
without any influence whatever from H.P.B. The whole matter
is set forth in
elaborate detail in The Theosophical Movement, pp. 195-210.
3 See statement of A. Trevor Barker, in his Introduction to
Letters of H.P.
Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, p. vii, as follows: "Much
fresh light is thrown on .
. . her relation with the notorious Solovyoff, who in his
rage and resentment at
being refused the privilege of chelaship, did so much to
injure her reputation.".220
4 See her Autobiography, and a recent work by Jeoffrey West,
The Life of Annie
Besant (Gerald Howe, Limited, London, 1929).
5 See statement made in The Theosophical Movement, p. 453.
The author has been
informed by several veteran Theosophists that this is not
likely, that perhaps
Chakravarti deputed others to guard her in this way. She
regarded him at this
time as actually her Master, and he could not with dignity
have assumed a rτle
of such condescension.
6 The Theosophical Movement, p. 479.7 Ibid., p. 559.
8 Mr. Judge's papers concerning Theosophy were turned over
to the Theosophical
Society in the presence of Mrs. Judge and are now in the
possession of the
International Headquarters at Point Loma, California. As
most of them pertained
to the Esoteric Section, their contents have naturally been
kept secret.
Consequently the evidence on which the claims that Mr. Judge
had made his wishes
known are based is still unavailable.
9 See signed statement by E. T. Hargrove in the New York Sun
of March 13, 1898.
10 The career of the Theosophic leader was beset with at
least three law-suits
instituted against her by relatives of wealthy followers
contesting the
disposition of funds allotted to her under the terms of
wills. Both the Thurston
and the Spalding suits were settled with compromise
agreements. In still another
sensational case Mrs. Tingley was sued by Irene M. Mohn for
damages in the
amount of $200,000 for alienation of the affections of her husband,
George F.
Mohn, a follower of Theosophy. Mrs. Mohn was awarded
$100,000 by a California
jury, but Mrs. Tingley won a reversal of the judgment before
the California
Supreme Court.
11 The work of an independent Theosophist, Mr. Roy Mitchell,
lecturing in New
York and Toronto, has also emphasized the extent of these
variations. He lays
particular emphasis on the Blavatskian doctrine of the
descent of angelic hosts
into the Adamic races of humanity to perform the work of
redeeming them from a
fallen estate, by means of the gift of Promethean fire or
wisdom.
12 The occurrence came to be known among the Theosophists as
"the Adyar
Manifestations."
13 Persons who have lived at the Theosophical headquarters
at Adyar at the
period of the publication of The Lives of Alcyone, have
intimated to the author
that certain residents of the colony who were not "put
in" the early "Lives"
went to Mr. Leadbeater and requested that he look into their
past and if
possible bring them into the story, with the result that he
did as requested in
certain instances. About 1925 also there was published in
England, by Mr. W.
Loftus Hare, in The Occult Review, an exposι of the whole
"Alcyone" proceeding,
the alleged sources of Mr. Leadbeater's material being
divulged in the shape of
some articles in old encyclopedias.
14 Brief mention should here be made of an incident arising
out of the general
situation occasioned by the founding of this Church, in view
of the principles
involved. Dr. William L. Robins, of Washington, D.C., long
an honored member of
the Theosophical Society, looked with disfavor upon the
establishment of an
ecclesiastical order in connection with Theosophy, and went
so far as to adduce
considerable evidence to show that the Liberal Catholic
Church was not free from
subserviency to the Roman Catholic Church. He resented the
movement as an
attempt to saddle religionism upon Theosophy, and endeavored
to show the hand of
Roman machination in the whole business. His statements and
letters, coming to.221
the notice of Mrs. Besant, were taken as an open attack upon
the religion of
members of the Theosophical Society, and as such constituted
a breach of
Theosophic conduct. Mrs. Besant straightway asked Dr. Robins
to resign from the
Esoteric Section, with a statement to the effect that no
member ought to attack
the religious affiliations of any member of the Theosophical
Society.
15 It was his intention first to locate the colony somewhere
in the James River
region in Virginia, and it was thought for a time that some
of the pirate gold
of
16 In 1929 an order was issued from Adyar by Dr. Besant
suspending the Esoteric
Section. A later order revived it in 1930.
17 Although Dr. Besant and her friends deny any substantial
significance in the
claims made, yet the two Keightleys, who typed the
manuscript of H.P.B.'s The
Secret Doctrine for the press, stated that Madame Blavatsky
had completed not
only a third volume which dealt with the lives of
outstanding occultists down
the ages, but practically a fourth volume, also; and Mrs.
Alice L. Cleather has
been quoted as saying that she herself saw literally
hundreds of changes made in
Madame Blavatsky's manuscripts in the handwriting of Mrs.
Besant and Mr. Mead.
As to these changes, Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, when
Vice-President of the
Theosophical Society, made a statement which will be found
on page 110 of The
Golden Book of The Theosophical Society:
"The facts are that H.P.B. always recognized that her
English was often
defective. . . . When The Secret Doctrine was published, she
realized that there
were many emendations necessary in a subsequent edition. . .
. This very heavy
task of checking and revising was largely the work of G. R.
S. Mead, who devoted
a great deal of his time to carrying out H.P.B.'s wishes in
the matter. . . .
"After H.P.B.'s death, all her remaining manuscript
material was published as a
third volume of The Secret Doctrine. She was under the
impression that the
material she had slowly collected during many years would
make five volumes in
all of The Secret Doctrine. But steadily as she wrote the
first two volumes of
The Secret Doctrine more and more of her material was
incorporated into the
first two volumes, and the remaining manuscript material
made only one more
volume."
The Keightleys insisted, however, that they had carefully
revised the language
of the first edition, working with H.P.B. through the
various stages of proof,
and that the extensive revisions in the second edition were
uncalled for. They
also stated that they had seen the manuscript of the third
volume "ready to be
given to the printers," and Alice Cleather pointed out
that H.P.B. had made
several direct references to it in the first edition which
were deleted in the
second. Because so little of the data has been made public,
the issue is still
too much beclouded for judgment.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER XIII SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
1 An official of the United Lodge of Theosophists declined
to aid in sending
letters to persons in that branch, stating that a
questionnaire was irrelevant
to the interests of true Theosophy.
2 The questions asked covered the points of age, sex,
profession, and length of
time connected with Theosophy; previous church affiliations,
if any, and reason
for abandoning them for Theosophy; the phase of Theosophy
appealing most
strongly to the individual, whether its philosophical, its
religious and.222
devotional side, or its scientific aspect; meditational
practice and adherence
to non-meat diet; favorite Theosophic authors and
literature; and lastly the
amount of time devoted to the Theosophic cause in one form
or another.
3 But one person adds: "I heard a Theosophic lecturer
who had something in his
face no other man had ever had save Bishop Brent."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MADAME HELENA P. BLAVATSKY
A Trevor Barker: Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P.
Sinnett,Edited by A. Trevor
Barker. London; Theosophical Publishing House, 1924. 381 pp.
G. Baseden Butt: Life of Madame Blavatsky. Philadelphia;
David McKay Co., 1927.
268 pp.
Alice L. Cleather: H. P. Blavatsky; Her Life and Work for
Humanity. Calcutta;
Thatcher, Spink & Co., 1922. 124 pp.
--------
H. P. Blavatsky, As I Knew Her; with an addendum by Basil Crump.
Calcutta; Thatcher, Spink & Co., 1923.76 pp.
--------
H. P. Blavatsky: A Great Betrayal. Calcutta; Thatcher,Spink & Co.,
1922. 96 pp.
Mme. E. Coulomb: Some Accounts of My Intercourse with Madame
Blavatsky from 1872
to 1884. London, 1885.
John N. Farquhar: Modern Religious Movements in India.
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER, "Theosophy."
London, 1915.
Franz Hartmann: Observations during a Nine Months' Stay at
the Headquarters of
the Theosophical Society. Madras, 1884.
Richard Hodgson: Report on the Theosophic psychic
phenomena,published in the
Proceedings of the British Society for Psychic Research,
Vol. III, 1885.
William Kingsland: The Real H. P. Blavatsky. London; John
M.Watkins, 1928. 278
pp.
Arthur Lillie: Madame Blavatsky and Her Theosophy. London,
1895.Col. H. S.
Olcott: Old Diary Leaves. Madras; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1910, Four
Vols. 1927 pp.
A. P. Sinnett: Early Days of Theosophy in Europe. London;
Theosophical
Publishing House, 1922. 118 pp.
--------
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky; based largely on a narrative
in Russian by her sister, Madame Vera Jelihowsky. London;
Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1913. 256 pp.
Vsevolod S. Solovyoff: A Modern Priestess of Isis; Abridged
and translated on
behalf of the Society for Psychic Research from the Russian
of V. S. Solovyoff
by Walter Leaf, Litt.D., with appendices. London and New
York; Longmans,Green
and Co., 1895. xix and 366 pp..223
Zinaida Vengerova: Sketch in Russian in the Kritico-biograficheskii
slovar
russkikh pisatelsi i uchenikh. St. Petersburg,1889-1904,
Vol. III. (On this are
mostly based the sketches in other Russian
Encyclopedias.)Princess Helene von
Racowitza: Autobiography; Translated from the German by
Cecil Marr and published
by the Constables, London, 1910.
Countess Constance Wachtmeister: Reminiscences of H. P.
Blavatsky and the Secret
Doctrine. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1893. 138
pp.
Herbert Whyte: H. P. Blavatsky; An Outline of Her Life.
London; The Lotus
Journal, 1909. 60 pp.
LITERATURE ON THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF
THEOSOPHY
NOTE: Literature bearing more or less directly upon the
general theme of
Theosophy is so enormous that several thousand titles would
not exhaust the body
of works touching upon the subject. Books written by modern
students of
Theosophy alone run into the hundreds. Mr. Roy Mitchell,
Theosophic lecturer, of
New York City, has estimated some two hundred to three
hundred early Theosophic
books that are now out of print. It is difficult to determine
a specifically
Theosophic book from those that deal with phases of
mysticism, esotericism and
occultism in general. Books of the sort are all more or less
amenable to
classification as Theosophic. The list of several hundred
here given is highly
representative of the books to be found in a good library of
a Theosophical
Society. There are hundreds of ancient and mediζval
theosophic works that have
never been translated into modern tongues. The Moorish
literature of Spain is
particularly a rich mine of theosophic treatises.
A. Square (Edwin Abbott): Flatland: A Romance of Many
Dimensions; with
Introduction by William Garnett, M. A., D.C.L. Boston;
Little, Brown & Co.,
1928. 151 pp.
Swami Abhedananda: Reincarnation; (three lectures).
Published by the Vedanta
Society, New York. 57 pp.
--------
Spiritual Unfoldment; (three lectures). New York; The Vedanta Society,
1901.
Sri Ananda Acharya: Brahmadarsanam; being an introduction to
the study of Hindu
Philosophy. New York; The Macmillan Co., 1917. 210 pp.
W. R. C. Coode Adams: A Primer of Occult Physics. London;
The Theosophical
Publishing House, Ltd., 1927. 65 pp.
W. Marsham Adams: The Book of The Master; or, The Egyptian
Doctrine of Light
Born of the Virgin Mother. London; John Murray; New York; G.
P. Putnam's Sons,
1898.204 pp.
--------
The House of the Hidden Places; A Clue to the Creed of Early Egypt;
from Egyptian Sources. London; John Murray, 1893. 249 pp.
Helen R. Albee: The Gleam. New York, Henry Holt & Co.,
1911.
312 pp.
Jerome A. Anderson; M. D., F.T.S.: Septenary Man; or, The
Microcosm. A Study of
the Human Soul. San Francisco; The Lotus Publishing Co.,
1895. 122 pp.
Anonymous: Christ in You. New York; Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1918. 184 pp.
--------
The Theosophical Movement: 1875-1925. A History and a Survey. New York;
E. P. Dutton & Co., 1925. 705 pp..224
--------
Man: Fragments of Forgotten History. (By two chelas of the Theosophical
Society.) London, 1874.
Sir Edwin Arnold: The Light of Asia; The life and teachings
of Gautama Buddha,
in verse. Philadelphia, Henry Altemus. 239 pp.
--------
The Light of the World; or, The Great Consummation. New York, Funk and
Wagnalls, 1891. 286 pp.
G. S. Arundale: Thoughts on 'At the Feet of the Master.'
Madras,Theosophical
Publishing House, 1919. 315 pp.
--------
Thoughts of the Great. Madras, Theosophical Publishing House, 1925. 222
pp.
--------
Nirvana. Chicago; The Theosophical Press, 1926. 192 pp. Adolph
D'Assier: Posthumous Humanity; A Study of Phantoms;
Translated and annotated by
Henry S. Olcott. London; George Redway, 1887. 360 pp.
"Brother Atisha": Exposition of the Doctrine of
Karma. London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1920. 120 pp.
May Anne Atwood: A Suggestive Inquiry Into the Hermetic
Mystery, with a
dissertation on the more celebrated of the Alchemical
Philosophers. Being an
attempt toward the recovery of the ancient Experiment of
Nature. Belfast;
William Tait; London; J. M. Watkins, 1920. 64, xxv,597 pp.
E. D. Babbitt, M. D., LL.D.: The Principles of Light and
Color.The Harmonic Laws
of the Universe; the Etherio-Atomic Philosophy of Force,
Chromo-Chemistry,
Chromo-Therapeutics, and the General Philosophy of the Finer
Forces,
etc.) Pub. by the author, at the College of Finer Forces,E.
Orange, N. J., 1896.
560 pp.
--------
Religion: As Revealed by the Material and Spiritual Universe. New York;
Babbitt & Co., 1881. 358 pp.
Benjamin Wisner Bacon: The Fourth Gospel in Research and
Debate; A series of
lessons on problems concerning the origin and value of the
anonymous writings
attributed to the Apostle John. New York; Moffat Yard &
Co., 1910. 544 pp.
Alice A. Bailey: The Consciousness of the Atom. New York;
Lucifer Publishing
Co., 1922. 104 pp.
--------
Initiation: Human and Solar. New York; Lucifer Publishing Co., 1922.
255 pp.
--------
Letters on Occult Meditation. New York; Lucifer Publishing Co., 1922.
357 pp.
James L. M. Bain: Corpus meum. London; Percy Lund, Humphries
& Co., Ltd., 1911.
104 pp.
--------
The Christ of the Holy Grail; or, The Great Christ of the Cosmos and
the Little Christ of the Soul. London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1909.
116 pp.
The Right Honorable J. W. Balfour: The Ear of Dionysius. New
York; Henry Holt &
Co., 1920. 127 pp.
Mrs. L. Dow Balliett: The Philosophy of Numbers. Published
by the author,
Atlantic City, N. J., 1908. 161 pp.
--------
Nature's Symphony; or, Lessons in Number Vibration. Published by the
author, Atlantic City, N. J., 1911. 132 pp.
A. Trevor Barker: Mahatma Letters To A. P. Sinnett from the
Mahatmas M. and K.
H. Transcribed, compiled and with an Introduction by A.
Trevor Barker. New York;
Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1924. 492 pp..225
Harriet Tuttle Bartlett: An Esoteric Reading of Biblical
Symbolism. Krotona,
Hollywood, Los Angeles, Cal.; Theosophical Publishing Co.,
1920. 218 pp.
L. Adams Beck (E. Barrington): The Story of Oriental
Philosophy. New York;
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1928. 429 pp.
Dr. Annie Besant: Ancient Ideals in Modern Life. Four
lectures delivered at
Benares, December 1900. London and Benares; Theosophical
Publishing Society,
1901. 145 pp.
--------
The Ancient Wisdom; An Outline of Theosophical Teachings. Adyar,
Madras, India; Theosophical Publishing House, 1897. 328 pp.
--------
Annie Besant; An Autobiography. London; T. Fisher Unwin, 1908. 368 pp.
--------
Australian Lectures; delivered in 1908. Sydney; George Robertson & Co.,
Ltd., 1908. 163 pp.
--------
Avatars; Four lectures delivered at Adyar, Madras, India, 1900.
Theosophical Publishing Society, London, 1900. 124 pp.
--------
H. P. Blavatsky and the Masters of the Wisdom. Krotona,Hollywood,
California; Theosophical Publishing House,1918. 109 pp.
--------
Britain's Place in the Great Plan: Four lectures delivered in London,
1921. London; Theosophical Publishing House, 1921. 104 pp.
--------
Buddhist Popular Lectures; Delivered in Ceylon, 1907.Madras, India; The
Theosophist Office, 1908. 129 pp.
--------
The Building of the Cosmos, and other lectures. Delivered at Adyar,
Madras, India, 1893. London: Theosophical Publishing House,
1894. 157 pp.
--------
The Changing World, and Lectures to Theosophical Students. Lectures
delivered in London, 1909. Chicago; Theosophical Book
Concern, 1910. 333 pp.
--------
Civilization's Deadlock, and the Keys. Five lectures delivered in
London, 1924. London; Theosophical Publishing House, Ltd.,
1924. 142 pp.
--------
Death-And After? London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1894. 94 pp.
--------
Karma; Three lectures delivered at Benares, 1898. Benares; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1899. 70 pp.
--------
Sanatana Dharma; an elementary textbook on Hindu religion and morals.
Benares; the Board of Trustees, Central Hindu College, 1902.
229 pp.
--------
Esoteric Christianity; or, The Lesser Mysteries. New York; John Lane;
The Bodley Head, 1904. 384 pp.
--------
The Evolution of Life and Form. London; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1900. 161 pp.
--------
Evolution and Man's Destiny. London; Theosophical Publishing Society in
England, 1924. 226 pp.
--------
Evolution and Occultism. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1913.
295 pp.
--------
For India's Uplift. A collection of speeches and writings on Indian
Questions. Madras; G. A. Natesan & Co. 283 pp.
--------
Four Great Religions; Four lectures delivered at Adyar. London,
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1897. 183 pp.
--------
The Great Plan. Four lectures delivered at Adyar, 1920. Madras;
Theosophical Publishing House, 1921. 109 pp.
--------
How a World Teacher Comes; as seen by ancient and modern psychology.
Four lectures delivered in London, 1926.
London, Theosophical Publishing House, Ltd., 1926. 90 pp.
--------
The Ideals of Theosophy. Four lectures delivered at Ben-
ares, 1911. Adyar, Madras; The Theosophist Office, 1912.130
pp.
--------
The Immediate Future. Lectures delivered in London,
1912. The Rajput Press, 1911. 176 pp..226
--------
In Defense of Hinduism. Benares and London; Theosophical Publishing
Society. 72 pp.
--------
Initiation: The Perfecting of Man. Chicago; The Theosophical Press,
1923. 149 pp.
--------
In The Outer Court. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1914. 176 pp.
--------
An Introduction to the Science of Peace. Adyar; The Theosophist Office,
1912. 86 pp.
--------
An Introduction to Yoga. Four lectures delivered at Ben-
ares, 1907. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1913. 159
pp.
--------
Karma. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895.83 pp.
--------
A Study in Karma. Krotona, Hollywood, Los Angeles,Calif.; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1918. 114 pp.
--------
London Lectures of 1907. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1907. 198 pp.
--------
Man and His Bodies. Krotona, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif.;
Theosophical Publishing House, 1918. 111 pp.
--------
Man's Life In This and Other Worlds. Adyar, Madras,India; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1913. 101 pp.
--------
The Masters. Adyar, Madras; The Theosophist Office, 1912. 66 pp.
--------
Mysticism. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1914,
143 pp.
--------
The Path of Discipleship. Four lectures delivered at Adyar. 1895.
London; Theosophical Publishing Society; Reprint,1917. 150
pp.
--------
The Pedigree of Man. Four lectures delivered at Adyar, 1903. Benares
and London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1908. 151 pp.
--------
Reincarnation. Krotona, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif.;Theosophical
Publishing House, 1919. 73 pp.
--------
Psychology. Krotona, California; Theosophical Publishing House, 1919.
311 pp.
--------
The Riddle of Life; And How Theosophy Explains It. London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1911. 58 pp.
--------
The Self and Its Sheaths. Four lectures delivered at Adyar, 1894.
London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1903.
120 pp.
--------
The Seven Principles of Man. London; Theosophical Publishing Society.
90 pp.
--------
Shri Rama Chandra; The Ideal King. Some Lessons from the Ramayana, for
the use of Hindu students in the schools of India. Benares
and London;
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905. 188 pp.
--------
Some Problems of Life. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1920.
139 pp.
--------
The Spiritual Life. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1912. 296
pp.
--------
The Story of the Great War. Some Lessons from the Mahabharata. For the
use of Hindu students in the schools of India. Benares and
London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1899. 271 pp.
--------
A Study in Consciousness; A Contribution to the Science of Psychology.
Krotona, California; Theosophical Publishing House, 1918.
273 pp.
--------
Superhuman Men, in History and in Religion. London;
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1913. 133 pp.
--------
Theosophy and Human Life. Four lectures delivered at
Benares 1904. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 123 pp.
--------
Theosophy and the New Psychology. Krotona, California;
Theosophical Publishing House, 1918. 124 pp.
--------
The Theosophical Society and the Occult Hierarchy. London; Theosophical
Publishing House, Ltd., 1925. 62 pp..227
--------
Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. Four lectures delivered at
Adyar, 1912. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1913. 112
pp.
--------
Theosophy and World Problems. Four letters delivered at Benares, 1921,
by Annie Besant, C. Jinarajadasa, J. Krishnamurti, and G. S.
Arundale. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing House, 1922. 104 pp.
--------
Thought Power: Its Culture and Control. Krotona: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1918. 133 pp.
--------
The Three Paths and Dharma. London; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1922. 157 pp.
--------
The Universal Text Book of Religion and Morals. Edited by Annie Besant.
Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House.157 pp.
--------
The War and Its Lessons. Four lectures delivered at London, 1919.
London; Theosophical Publishing House, 1920. 87 pp.
--------
The Wisdom of the Upanishads. Four lectures delivered at Adyar, 1906.
Benares and London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1907.
103 pp.
--------
World Problems of Today. London; Theosophical Publishing House, Ltd.,
1925. 144 pp.
C. H. A. Bjerregaard: The Great Mother; A Gospel of the
Eternal Feminine. Occult
and scientific studies and experiences in the sacred and
secret life. New York;
The Inner Life Publishing Co., 1913. 325 pp.
Algernon Blackwood: Karma-A Reincarnation Play. By Algernon
Blackwood and Violet
Pearn. New York; E. P. Dutton & Co., 1918. 207 pp.
Helena P. Blavatsky: Alchemy and the Secret Doctrine;
Compiled and Edited by
Alexander Horne. Wheaton, Ill.; The Theosophical Press,
1927. 205 pp.
--------
First Steps in Occultism; Reprint from Lucifer. San Francisco; Mercury
Publishing Co., 1898. 135 pp.
--------
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindustan. Translated from the Russian of
H. P. Blavatsky. London; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1892. 318 pp.
--------
The Key to Theosophy; being a clear exposition in the form of question
and answer, of the Ethics, Science and Philosophy for the
study of which the
Theosophical Society has been founded. Los Angeles; The
United Lodge of Theoso-
phists, 1920. 243 pp.
--------
A Modern Panarion; A Collection of Fugitive Fragments. London;
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895. 504 pp.
--------
Isis Unveiled; A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern
Science and Theology. Two Vols. New York; J. W. Bouton,
1877. 705 and 691 pp.
--------
Nightmare Tales. London; Theosophical Publishing House. 133 pp.
--------
The Secret Doctrine; The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and
Philosophy. London; Theosophical Publishing House, 1893.
Several reprints, 3
Vols.
--------
The Voice of the Silence, and other chosen fragments from the Book of
the Golden Precepts, for the daily use of Lanoos. New York;
Theosophical
Publishing House of New York, 1919. 107 pp.
--------
The Theosophical Glossary. Krotona; Theosophical Publishing House,
1918. 360 pp.
Jacob Boehme: The Way to Christ. London; J. M. Watkins,
1911. 301 pp.
--------
The Signature of All Things. London and Toronto; J. M. Dent; New York;
E. P. Dutton & Co., 1912. 295 pp.
--------
Six Theosophic Points, and other writings; Newly translated into
English by John Rolleston Earle, M. A. London; Constable
& Co., Ltd., 1919. 208
pp.
--------
The Threefold Life of Man; According to the three principles. London;
J. M. Watkins, 1909. 547 pp.
Columbus Bradford, A. M.: Birth: A New Chance. Chicago; A.
C. McClurg & Co.,
1901. 362 pp.
Claude Bragdon: The Beautiful Necessity; Seven Essays on
Theosophy and
Architecture. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1922. 171 pp..228
--------
Four-Dimensional Vistas. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1916. 134 pp.
--------
Old Lamps for New; The Ancient Wisdom in the Modern World. New York;
Alfred A. Knopf, 1925. 206 pp.
--------
A Primer of Higher Space. New York; Alfred A. Knopf,1923. 81 pp.
Robert T. Browne: The Mystery of Space; A Study of the
Hyperspace Movement in
the Light of the Evolution of New Psychic Faculties; and, An
Inquiry into the
Genesis and Essential Nature of Space. New York; E. P.
Dutton & Co., 1919. 358
pp.
Joseph Rodes Buchanan: Psychometry: The Dawn of a New
Civilization. Boston;
Published by the Author, 1883.288 pp.
J. D. Buck, M. D.: A Study of Man. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke
& Co., 1889. 302
pp.
Dr. Rickard Maurice Bucke: Cosmic Consciousness.
Philadelphia; Jones & Jones,
1905. 318 pp.
Marie, Countess of Caithness, Duchess of Pomar: The Mystery
of the Ages,
Contained in the Secret Doctrine of All Religions. London;
C. L. H. Wallace,
1887. 541 pp.
Edward Carpenter: The Art of Creation; Essays on the Self
and its Powers.
London; George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1904. 234 pp. and
Appendix.
--------
Pagan and Christian Creeds; Their Origin and Meaning. New York;
Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1920. 308 pp.
Paul Carus: The Gospel of Buddha. Chicago; The Open Court
Publishing Co., 1909.
260 pp.
Clara M. Codd: Theosophy as the Masters See It. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing
House, 1926. 369 pp.
--------
Masters and Disciples. London; Theosophical Publishing Co., Ltd., 1928.
94 pp.
Mabel Collins (Mrs. K. Cook): A Cry From Afar. London;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 54 pp.
--------
As the Flower Grows: Some Visions and an Interpretation. London;
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1915. 112 pp.
--------
The Awakening. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906. 102 pp.
--------
The Blossom and the Fruit: A True Story of a Black Magician. New York;
Theosophical Publishing Society.
332 pp.
--------
The Transparent Jewel: London; Wm. Rider and Son, Ltd., 1912. 142 pp.
--------
The Idyll of the White Lotus. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,
1919. 168 pp.
--------
Fragments of Thought and Life. London; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1908. 121 pp.
--------
The Crucible. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1914. 125 pp.
--------
The Builders. London; Theosophical Publishing Society,1920. 70 pp.
--------
Illusions. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905. 71 pp.
--------
Light on the Path. Boston; Occult Publishing Co. 89 pp.
--------
Our Glorious Future. Edinburgh; Theosophical Book Shop, 1917. 113 pp.
--------
Through the Gates of Gold. London; J. M. Watkins, 1901. 138 pp.
--------
When the Sun Moves Northward. London; Theosophical Publishing House,
Ltd., 1923. 183 pp.
Irving S. Cooper: Methods of Psychic Development. Chicago;
The Theosophical
Press, 1926. 113 pp.
--------
Reincarnation: The Hope of the World. Chicago; The Theosophical Press,
1927. 121 pp.
James H. Cousins: The Basis of Theosophy. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing House,
1913, 64 pp.
Bhagavan Das: The Science of the Emotions. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing House,
1924. 524 pp..229
--------
The Science of Peace. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1904.
332 pp.
--------
The Science of Social Organization; or, The Laws of Manu in the Light
of Theosophy. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1910. 358 pp.
--------
The Science of the Sacred Word: Being a summarized translation of The
Pranava-Vada of Gargyayana, by Bhagavan Das. Adyar; The
Theosophist Office,
1910. 374 pp.
Surendranath Dasgupta: Yoga: As Philosophy and Religion.
London; Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1924. 187 pp.
Rev. John Bathurst Deane, M. A.: The Worship of the Serpent;
Attesting the Temptation and Fall of Man. London; J. G. and
F. Rivington, 1883.
475 pp.
Leon Denis (Leon Denizarth Hippolyte Rivail): Here and
Hereafter. London; Wm.
Rider and Son, Ltd., 1910. 352 pp.
--------
Jeanne D'Arc, Medium; ses voix, ses visions, ses prιmonitions, ses vues
actuelles exprimιes en ses propres messages. Paris; Libraire
des Sciences
Psychiques, 1910. 450 pp.
--------
Life and Destiny; Translated into English by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
London; Gay and Hancock, Ltd., 1919. 313 pp.
--------
The Mystery of Joan of Arc. Translated by Arthur Conan Doyle. London:
J. Murray, 1924. 233 pp.
Ignatius Donnelly: Atlantis; The Antediluvian World. New
York and London; Harper
and Brother, 1882. 480 pp.
J. W. Dunne: An Experiment with Time. New York; The
Macmillan Co., 1927. 208 pp.
A. E. (George Russell): The Candle of Vision. London; The
Macmillan Co., Ltd.,
1920. 175 pp.
Lillian Edger, M. A.: The Elements of Theosophy. London;
Theosophical Publishing
House, 1903. 202 pp.
W. Scott-Elliot: The Lost Lemuria. London; Theosophical
Publishing Society,
1904. 44 pp.
--------
Man's Place in the Universe. London and Benares; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1902. 132 pp.
--------
The Story of Atlantis. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1914.
87 pp.
Edward C. Farnsworth: Special Teachings From the Arcane
Science. Portland: Smith
& Sale, Printers. 1918. 189 pp.
Benedictus Figulus: A Golden and Blessed Casket of Nature's
Marvels, concerning
the blessed mystery of the Philosopher's Stone, containing
the Revelation of the
most illuminated Egyptian King and Philosopher, Hermes
Trismegistus. Published
by Benedictus Figulus of Utenhofen. 357 pp.
Adolph Francke: The Kabbalah; or, The Religious Philosophy
of the Hebrews. New
York; The Kabbalah Publishing Co.,1926. 311 pp.
Will L. Garver: Brother of the Third Degree. Chicago; Purdy
Publishing Co.,
1894. 377 pp.
Elias Gewurz: The Hidden Treasures of the Ancient Qabalah.
Vol. I. (The
Transmutation of Passion Into Power.) Krotona; The
Theosophical Publishing
House, 1915. 133 pp.
L. Hayden Guest: Theosophy and Social Reconstruction.
London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1912. 138 pp.
H. Fielding Hall: The Soul of a People. London; The
Macmillan Co., Ltd., 1905.
314 pp.
Franz Hartmann, M. D.: Among the Gnomes. An Occult Tale of
Adventure in the
Untersburg. London; T. Fisher Unwin,1895. 272 pp.
--------
The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme, the God-Taught Philosopher. New
York; Macoy Publishing Co., 1929. 336 pp..230
--------
The Life of Jehoshua, The Prophet of Nazareth. An Occult Study and the
Key to the Bible. Boston; Occult Publishing Co., 1889. 208
pp.
--------
The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim-known by the
name of Paracelsus, and the substance of his teachings.
London; Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1896. 304 pp.
--------
Occult Science in Medicine. New York; Theosophical Publishing Society.
1890, 100 pp.
--------
The Talking Image of Urur. New York; John W. Lovell Co., 1890. 306 pp.
--------
In the Pronaos of the Temple; Concerning the History of the True and
the False Rosicrucians. London; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1890. 134 pp.
--------
Magic, White and Black; or, The Science of Finite and Infinite Life.
London; George Redway, 1886. 228 pp.
--------
With the Adepts; An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians. New York;
Theosophical Publishing Co., 1910. 180 pp.
William C. Hartmann, Ph. D.: Who's Who in Occult, Psychic,
and Spiritual Realms.
Jamaica, New York; The Occult Press, 1925. 196 pp.
Max Heindel: The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. Seattle,
Wash.; Rosicrucian
Fellowship, 1910. 542 pp.
C. H. Hinton, M. A.: The Fourth Dimension. London; Swan,
Sonnenschein & Co.,
Ltd., 1914. 247 pp.
--------
A New Era of Thought. London; Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1900. 210
pp.
--------
Scientific Romances. London; Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1882. 229 pp.
Geoffrey Hodson: The Kingdom of Faerie. London; Theosophical
Publishing House,
Ltd., 1927. 112 pp.
--------
The Fairies at Work and at Play. London; Theosophical Publishing House,
Ltd., 1925. 126 pp.
--------
An Occult View of Health and Disease. London; Theosophical Publishing
House, Ltd., 1925. 52 pp.
--------
The Science of Seership. London; Wm. Rider & Co., 1925, 220 pp.
Alexander Horne: Theosophy and the Fourth Dimension. London;
Theosophical
Publishing House, Ltd., 1928. 108 pp.
Powis Hoult: A Dictionary of Theosophical Terms. London;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1910. 161 pp.
Olive Stevenson Howell: Heredity and Reincarnation. London;
Theosophical
Publishing House, Ltd., 1926. 68 pp.
Thomas Inman: Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism.
New York; J. W.
Bouton, 1876. 175 pp.
--------
Ancient Faiths and Modern. New York; J. W. Bouton, 1876. 498 pp.
Hargrave Jennings: The Rosicrucians; Their Rites and
Mysteries. London; George
Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 464 pp.
C. Jinarajadasa: The Law of Christ. Adyar; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1924.
292 pp.
--------
The Early Teachings of the Masters. Chicago; The Theosophical Press,
1923. 245 pp.
--------
The Golden Book of the Theosophical Society, edited by C. Jinarajadasa.
A Brief History of the Society's Growth from 1875 to 1925.
Adyar; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1925. 421 pp.
--------
How We Remember Our Past Lives. Chicago; Theosophical Press, 1923. 110
pp.
--------
Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom. Chicago; The Theosophical
Press, 1926. 220 pp.
--------
The Message of the Future. Glasgow; Star Publishing Trust. 157 pp.
--------
Theosophy and Modern Thought. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,
1915. 171 pp.
Charles Johnston: Karma: Works and Wisdom. New York; The
Metaphysical Publishing
Co., 1900. 56 pp..231
--------
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. New York; Charles Johnston, 1912. 119 pp.
--------
The Memory of Past Births. New York; The Metaphysical Publishing Co.,
1909. 55 pp.
William Q. Judge: Echoes From the Orient. New York; The
Path, 1890. 68 pp.
--------
Letters That Have Helped Me. Compiled by W. Q. Judge. New York; The
Path. 90 pp.
--------
The Ocean of Theosophy. Los Angeles; The United Lodge of Theosophists,
1915. 154 pp.
--------
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali; An Interpretation. New York; The Path,
1889. 64 pp.
Anna B. Kingsford: Clothed with the Sun. Birmingham; The
Ruskin Press, 1906. 340
pp.
--------
The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ. London; J. M. Watkins,
1909. 357 pp.
--------
The Virgin of the World; or, Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Madras;
Spiritualistic Book Depot, 1895.
William Kingsland: The Esoteric Basis of Christianity.
London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1895. 195 pp.
--------
The Mystic Quest; A Tale of Two Incarnations. London; George Allen &
Unwin, 1891. 215 pp.
--------
Our Infinite Life. New York; Moffat, Yard & Co., 1923.200 pp.
--------
The Physics of the Secret Doctrine. London; Theosophical Publishing
Society. 1910. 152 pp.
J. Krishnamurti: At the Feet of the Master. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing
House, 1913. 71 pp.
--------
Education as Service. Chicago; The Rajput Press, 1912. 160 pp.
--------
The Kingdom of Happiness. New York; Boni & Liveright, 1927. 112 pp.
--------
Life in Freedom. New York; Horace Liveright, 1928. 96 pp.
--------
The Pool of Wisdom, and Poems. Eerde, Ommen, Holland; The Star
Publishing Trust, 1928. 99 pp.
--------
Self-Preparation. Eerde, Ommen, Holland; Star Publishing Trust, 1926.
94 pp.
--------
Towards Discipleship. Chicago; The Theosophical Press, 1926. 106 pp.
Charles W. Leadbeater: The Astral Plane; Its Scenery,
Inhabitants and Phenomena.
Krotona, California; Theosophical Publishing House, 1918.
127 pp.
--------
The Devachanic Plane; or, The Heaven World. Krotona; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1919. 120 pp.
--------
Dreams-What They Are and How They Are Caused. London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1903. 69 pp.
--------
Clairvoyance. Krotona; Theosophical Publishing House, 1918. 161 pp.
--------
The Christian Creed: Its Origin and Signification. London; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1904. 172 pp.
--------
Glimpses of Masonic History. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,
1926. 380 pp.
--------
The Hidden Life in Freemasonry. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,
1926. 352 pp.
--------
The Hidden Side of Things. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1918.
482 pp.
--------
The Hidden Side of Christian Festivals. London and Sydney; The St.
Alban Press, 1920. 499 pp.
--------
The Inner Life. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,1911. 2 Vols. 324
and 318 pp.
--------
Man, Visible and Invisible. London; Theosophical Publishing House,
1920. (Reprint.) 149 pp.
--------
Invisible Helpers. Chicago; Theosophical Book Concern, 1915. 133 pp.
--------
The Life After Death-And How Theosophy Unveils It.London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1912. 58 pp..232
--------
The Lives of Alcyone. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1924. 351
and 383 pp. (2 Vols.)
--------
The Masters and the Path. Chicago; The Theosophical Press, 1925. 328
pp.
--------
The Monad; And Other Essays Upon the Higher Consciousness. Adyar;
Theosophical Publishing House, 1920. 133 pp.
--------
The Other Side of Death; Scientifically Examined and Carefully
Described. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House, 1928. 826
pp.
--------
An Outline of Theosophy. Chicago; Theosophical Book Concern, 1916. 99
pp.
--------
The Perfume of Egypt, and Other Weird Stories. Adyar; The Theosophist
Office, 1912. 306 pp.
--------
The Science of the Sacraments. London and Sydney; St. Alban Press, 920.
550 pp.
--------
Some Glimpses of Occultism, Ancient and Modern. Chicago; Theosophical
Book Concern, 1903. 391 pp.
--------
Talks on 'At the Feet of the Master.' Chicago; The Theosophical Press,
923. 514 pp.
--------
A Textbook of Theosophy. Krotona; Theosophical Publishing House, 1918.
148 pp.
Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater (in collaboration):
Thought Forms. (With 58
illustrations.) London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 84
pp.
--------
Talks on the Path of Occultism. Adyar; Theosophical Publishing House,
1926. 925 pp.
--------
Man: Whence, How, and Whither? A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation.
Chicago; The Theosophical Press,1922. 483 pp.
--------
Occult Chemistry. Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements.
London; Theosophical Publishing House, 1919. 108 pp.
Eliphas Levi (Baron Alphonse Louis Constant): The Aquarian
Gospel of Jesus the
Christ. London; C. F. Cazenove, 1909. 260 pp.
--------
The History of Magic; Including a Clear and Precise Exposition of Its
Procedure, Its Rites, and Its Mysteries.(Translated by A. E.
Waite.) London; Wm.
Rider & Son, 1913. 525 pp.
Sir Oliver Lodge: Science and Immortality. New York; Moffat,
Yard & Co., 1909.
294 pp.
--------
The Survival of Man; A Study in Unrecognized Human Faculty. New York;
Moffat, Yard & Co., 1916. 357 pp.
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race. London; George
Routledge & Son, 1874.
248 pp.
--------
A Strange Story. London; George Routledge & Sons, 1876. 531 pp.
--------
Zanoni. Boston; Little, Brown & Co., 1927. 540 pp. Dr. A. Marques:
Scientific Corporations of Theosophy. London;Theosophical
Publishing Society,
1908. 152 pp.
Gerald Massey: A Book of Beginnings; Containing an attempt
to recover and
reconstitute the lost origins of the myths and mysteries,
types and symbols,
religion and language,with Egypt for the mouthpiece and
Africa as the
birthplace. London; Williams and Norgate, 1881. 503 pp.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers: The Kabbalah Unveiled. London;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 341 pp.
George R. S. Mead: Echoes from the Gnosis: The Gnosis of the
Mind. London and
Benares; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906. 69 pp.
--------
The Hymns of Hermes. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1907. 84 pp.
--------
The Hymn of Jesus. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1907. 83 pp..233
--------
The Mysteries of Mithra. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1907. 90 pp.
--------
The Vision of Aridζus. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1907. 74 pp.
--------
Did Jesus Live 100 B. C.? An inquiry into the Talmud Jesus stories, the
Toldoth Jeschu, and other curious statements of Epiphanius,
being a contribution
to the study of Christian origins. London and Benares;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1903. 436 pp.
--------
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. Some short sketches among the Gnostics,
mainly of the First and Second centuries, based on the most
recently recovered
material. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1900.607 pp.
--------
Simon Magus: An Essay. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1902. 92 pp.
--------
The World Mystery. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1907. 185 pp.
--------
The Theosophy of the Vedas. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 2 Vols.
--------
The Pistis Sophia; A Gnostic Gospel. London and Benares; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1898. 394 pp.
--------
The Gnostic John the Baptizer. Selections from the Mandζan John-Book.
Together with studies on John and Christian origins; the
Slavonic Josephus'
account of John and Jesus, and John and the Fourth Gospel
Proem.
London; J. M. Watkins, 1924. 137 pp.
--------
The Gospels and the Gospel. A study in the most recent results of the
lower and the higher criticism. London and Benares;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1902. 214 pp.
--------
Orpheus: The Theosophy of the Greeks. London and Benares; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1896. 320 pp.
--------
Plotinus. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895. 48 pp.
--------
Quests Old and New. London; G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1913.328 pp.
--------
Some Mystical Adventures. London; J. M. Watkins, 1910.303 pp.
--------
Thrice Greatest Hermes. Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis.
London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906. 3
Vols. 481, 403, and
330 pp.
Roy F. Mitchell: The Creative Theater. New York, John Day
Co.,1930. 256 pp.
Frederic W. H. Myers: Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death. New
York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1904.2 Vols. 700 and 627
pp.
Robert W. Norwood: The Heresy of Antioch. Garden City, New
York; Doubleday,
Doran & Co., 1928. 303 pp.
Isabel Cooper-Oakley: The Comte De St. Germain, The Secret
Emissary of Kings.
London; Theosophical Publishing House, Ltd., 1912. 247 pp.
--------
Mystical Traditions. Milan, Italy; Libreria Editrice del Dr. G. Sulli-Rao,
1909. 296 pp.
--------
Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Mediζval Mysticism. London;
Theosophical Publishing Society, 1900. 192 pp.
Col. Henry S. Olcott: People of the Other World. Hartford,
Conn.;American
Publishing Co., 1875. 492 pp.
--------
Old Diary Leaves. Madras; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1910. Four
Vols. 491, 476, 446, and 514 pp.
--------
Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science. London; John Redway, 1885. 385
pp.
Walter Gorn Old: The Shu King. London and Benares;
Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1904. 306 pp.
--------
What is Theosophy? London; Hay, Nisbet & Co., 1892. 128 pp.
P. D. Ouspensky: Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of
Thought; A Key to the
Enigmas of the World. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1929. 336
pp..234
Dr. Th. Pascal: Reincarnation: A Study in Human Evolution.
London; Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1910. 303 pp.
P. Pavri: Theosophy Explained in Questions and Answers.
Adyar; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1921. 276 pp.
A. J. Penny: Studies in Jacob Boehme. London; J. M.
Watkins,1912. 473 pp.
James Morgan Pryse: Reincarnation in the New Testament. New
York; Elliott B.
Page & Co., 1900. 92 pp.
--------
The Apocalypse Unsealed; being an esoteric interpretation of the
initiation of Ioannes. New York; J. M. Pryse, 1910. 222 pp.
--------
The Magical Message According to Ioannes. New York; Theosophical
Publishing Co. of New York, 1909. 230 pp.
--------
The Restored New Testament. The Jewish Fragments, freed from the
Pseudo-Jewish Interpolations. New York; J. M. Pryse; London;
John M. Watkins,
1914. 817 pp.
W. Winwood Reade: The Veil of Isis: or, Mysteries of the
Druids. New York; Peter
Eckler Publishing Co., 1917. 250 pp.
H. Stanley Redgrove: Alchemy Ancient and Modern. London;
William Rider & Son,
Ltd., 1911. 141 pp.
L. W. Rogers: Dreams and Premonitions. Los Angeles;
Theosophic Book Concern,
916. 121 pp.
--------
Elementary Theosophy. Chicago; Theosophical Book Concern, 1923. 260 pp.
--------
Gods in the Making; and other lectures. Chicago; Theosophical Book
Concern, 1925. 133 pp.
--------
The Ghosts in Shakespeare. Chicago; Thesophical Book Concern, 1925. 185
pp.
--------
The Hidden Side of Evolution. Chicago; Theosophical Book Concern, 1926.
195 pp.
--------
The Purpose of Life, and other lectures. Chicago; Theosophical Book
Concern, 1925. 140 pp.
--------
Reincarnation, and other lectures. Chicago; TheosophicalBook Concern,
1925. 138 pp.
G. Krishna Sastri: The Tattvasarayana, The Occult Philosophy
Taught by the Great
Sage Sri Vasishtha. (Translated by Sri Rama Gita.) Madras;
Published by the
translator,1902. 135 pp.
Edouard Schure: The Great Initiates. Sketch of the Secret
History of Religions.
Philadelphia; David McKay Co. 3 Vols. 362, 394, and 394 pp.
--------
Hermes and Plato. London; William Rider & Son, Ltd. 117 pp.
--------
Jesus, the Last Great Initiate. Chicago; Yogi Publishing Society, 125
pp.
--------
Krishna and Orpheus; The Great Initiates of the East and West. Chicago;
Yogi Publishing Society, 1908.121 pp.
--------
The Priestess of Isis. London; William Rider & Son, Ltd.,1910. 318 pp.
--------
Rama and Moses. New York; Theosophical Publishing Co., 1910. 147 pp.
Sir Walter Scott: Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. With
an Introduction by
Henry Morley. London; George Routledge and Sons, 1887. 320
pp.
William Simpson: The Buddhist Praying Wheel. London; The
Macmillan & Co., Ltd.,
1896. 294 pp.
A. P. Sinnett: Esoteric Buddhism. Boston and New York;
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1884. 330 pp.
--------
The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe. London; Theosophical Publishing
House, Ltd., 1922. 118 pp.
--------
Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching. Philadelphia; J. B.Lippincott Co.,
1920. 307 pp.
--------
The Growth of the Soul. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1905. 483 pp..235
--------
In the Next World. Actual Narratives of Personal Experiences by Some
Who have Passed On. London; Theosophical Publishing Society,
1914. 102 pp.
--------
Karma. A novel. Chicago; Rand, McNally & Co., 1887.
285 pp.
--------
Nature's Mysteries. London and Benares; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1901. 184 pp.
--------
Occult Essays. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905. 226 pp.
--------
The Occult World. London; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1884. 194
pp.
--------
The Rationale of Mesmerism. Boston and New York; Houghton, Mifflin &
Co., 1892. 228 pp.
--------
Tennyson an Occultist; As His Writings Prove. London; Theosophical
Publishing House, 1920. 89 pp.
Lewis Spence: Atlantis in America. New York; Brentano's,
1925. 232 pp.
--------
The Problem of Atlantis. New York; Brentano's, 1928. 205 pp.
Rudolf Steiner: Atlantis and Lemuria. Their History and
Civili-
zation. Chicago; The Rajput Press, 1911. 231 pp.
--------
Initiation and Its Results. New York; Macoy Publishing
and Masonic Supply Co., 1909. 134 pp.
--------
Mystics of the Renaissance. New York and London; G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1911. 278 pp.
--------
The Philosophy of Freedom. New York and London; G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1916. 301 pp.
--------
A Road to Self-Knowledge. London and New York; G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1918. 124 pp.
--------
Theosophy. Chicago and New York; Rand, McNally & Co.,1910. 230 pp.
--------
Three Essays on Haeckel and Karma. London; Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1914. 223 pp.
--------
The Way of Initiation. Chicago; The Occult Publishing Co., 1908. 210
pp.
J. C. Street: The Hidden Way Across the Threshold. Boston;
Lee and Shepard,
1887. 587 pp.
Arthur Edward Waite: Lives of the Alchemistical
Philosophers.London; George
Redway, 1888. 275 pp.
--------
The Turba Philosophorum; or, Assembly of the Sages. London; George
Redway, 1896. 207 pp.
--------
The Way of Divine Union. London; William Rider & Son, 1915. 327 pp.
E. D. Walker: Reincarnation: A study of Forgotten Truth. New
York; Theosophical
Publishing Co., 1916. 325 pp.
W. Wynn Westcott: Numbers, Their Occult Power and Mystical
Virtues. London and
Benares; Theosophical Publishing Society, 1902. 116 pp.
Charles J. Whitby: The Wisdom of Plotinus. A Metaphysical
Study. London; William
Rider & Son, 1909. 130 pp.
F. Milton Willis: Recurring Earth Lives; How and Why? New
York; E. P. Dutton &
Co., 1921. 92 pp.
--------
The Return of the World Teacher; Purifying Christianity.The Common
Voice of Religion. New York; E. P. Dutton & Co., 1924.
121 pp.
--------
The Spiritual Life; How to Attain It and Prepare Children for It. New
York; E. P. Dutton & Co., 1922. 99 pp.
--------
The Truth About Christ and the Atonement. New York; E. P. Dutton & Co.,
1922. 96 pp.
Ernest Wood: Character Building. Chicago; The Theosophical
Press, 1924. 129 pp.
--------
Concentration; A Practical Course. Chicago; The Theosophical Press,
1923. 172 pp.
--------
Memory Training. Chicago; The Theosophical Press, 1925. 158 pp.
--------
The Seven Rays. Chicago; The Theosophical Press, 1925. 185 pp..236
Transactions of the London Lodge of the Theosophical
Society. 20 Vols.
Transactions of the First Annual Congress of the Federation
of European Sections
of the Theosophical Society held in Amsterdam, June, 1904.
Edited by Johan Van
Manen,Amsterdam, 1906. 398 pp.
Transactions of the Second and Third Annual Congresses in
London and Paris,
1907. 444 and 366 pp.
PERIODICALS
In Bound Volumes
The Theosophic Review (formerly Lucifer).
The Theosophist.
The Path.
The Word.
The Herald of the Star.
Extracts from the Vahan.
The Theosophical Messenger.
The Canadian Theosophist.
Theosophy.
The Theosophical Quarterly.
The American Theosophist.
The Quest.
The Occult Review..237
INDEX
Abel, 228.
Bacon, Roger, 15, 16, 39, 119
Absolute, The, 198, 199, 201, 240, 273.
Balzac, Honorι, 19.
Adam, 189, 212, 228, 256.
Beck, L. Adams, 238, 239
Adam Kadmon, 215
Besant, Dr. Annie, 76, 145, 194, 307 ff.,
Adepts, The, 2, 5, 31, 112, 120, 129, 136,
310 ff., 349.
138, 152 ff., 171, 174, 182, 221, 296,
Bhagavad Gita, The, 25, 28, 29, 273, 280.
304.
Bible, The, 23, 25.
Akasha, 134, 153, 206, 216, 243, 260,
Blake, C. Carter, 192.
329.
Blake, William, 19.
Albigenses, The, 15.
Blavatsky, Helena P., biography:
Alchemists, The, 15.
birth, 43; childhood, 45; disposition,
Alchemy, 130, 132.
46; invisible playmates, 47; marriages,
Aldus Academy, The, 15.
49, 50, 58; wanderings, 50 ff.; founds
Altruism, 291.
Sociιtι Spirite in Cairo, 57, 91; funds
Analogy, Law of, 239.
supplied, 57; illnesses, 54, 58, 68, 70,
Androgynes, 226 ff.
84, 87; personal appearance, 59, 60,
Angels, 225, 228.
61; tribute to, by J. Ransom Bridges,
Anglo-Saxons, 225.
61; description of, by Countess
Anthropogenesis, 194.
Racowitza, 60; irascibility, 62; psy-
Apollonius of Tyana, 41, 119.
chic phenomena, 62-88; in Spiritu-
Archangels, 205.
alism, 90-94; divergence from Spiritu-
Arhat, 272.
alism, 95, 96; writing of Isis Un-
Aristotle, 9, 10, 12, 119, 199, 205.
veiled, 114-127; relation to Mahatma
Arjuna, 280, 282.
Morya, 149 ff.; production of The
Aryans, The, 225, 231, 275.
Mahatma Letters, 154 ff.; accused by
Arya-Somaj, The, 24, 110, 111.
Madame Coulomb, 178 ff.; repre-
Asana, 284.
sented First Section T.S., 183; exposi-.238
Astral body, The, 208, 222, 229, 275,
tion of The Secret Doctrine, 194 ff.;
286.
attitude of teachings to modern
Astral light, The, 120, 133, 243, 329.
science, 265 ff.; exposition of spiritual
Astrology, 132, 135.
ethics, 265 ff.; Sun Libel Suit, 301 ff.;
Asuras, The, 225, 228.
relations with V. S. Solovyoff, 304 ff.;
Atlantis, 224, 231, 257, 275.
death, 308; relation to the Judge Case,
Atma, 213.
310 ff.; et passim.
Atom, The, 259, 262, 277.
Boehme, Jacob, 15, 263.
Atonement, The, 142.
Bogomiles, The, 15.
Augoλides, The, 279.
Bradwardine, Robert, 15.
Augustine, 14, 119.
Brahm, 156, 163, 240, 241, 242.
Avatars, 6.
Brahmanism, 312, 318.
Averroλs, 119.
Brahmo-Somaj, 24.
Avichi, 167.
Britten, Mrs. Emma H., 35.
Avidya, 159.
Brotherhood, The Great White, 2, 101,
110, 144, 148, 150, 271, 321.
Babylon, 6.
Brotherhood of Humanity, 113, 184,
Bacon, Francis, 15, 159.
185, 294, 295, 306, 310 ff., 327 ff.
375
Brown, W. T., 181
Crosbie, Robert, 326.
Bruno, Giordano, 5, 119, 139.
Cycle of necessity, 9, 164, 200.
Bucke, Richard M., 29.
Cycles, Law of, 3, 239 ff.
Buddha, The, 25, 112, 138, 144, 145,
268, 289
Darwinism, 232 ff., 253 ff.
Buddhi, 213, 214.
Davis, Andrew Jackson, 37, 38.
Buddhism, 312.
Demiurge, 201.
Bulgars, The, 15.
Democritus, 119.
Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, 35, 192.
Devachan, 165 ff., 245 ff.
Devas, 205, 253, 254..239
Cables, Josephine W., 181 ff.
Development, Theosophic theory of, 2,
Cagliostro, 15, 136.
3, 305.
Cain, 228.
Dharana, 284.
Cardano, Jerome, 16.
Dharma, 282, 285, 288, 291, 294.
Carlyle, Thomas, 24.
Dhyan Chohans, The, 174.
Cathari, The, 15.
Dhyana, 284.
Catholicism, Roman, 144.
Dhyanand, Swami, 110, 111.
Causal body, 242.
Dietrich of Berne, 15.
Chakras, 275.
Dike, 8.
Chakravarti, G. N., 311 ff.
Dimension, The Fourth, 216.
Chaldeans, The, 13, 16, 104, 144.
Discipleship, Path of, 280, 283.
Channing, William E., 23.
Domovoy (house spirit), 45.
Chatterji, Mohini M., 84, 177.
Donnelley, Ignatius, 41, 231.
Chelaship, 170, 175.
Double, The etheric, 246, 284, 286.
Children of the Light, 20.
Doubleday, Gen. Abner W., 107-109.
China, 6.
Dresser, Horatio W., 30.
Christ, The, 23, 144, 147, 182, 276.
Druids, The, 224.
Christianity, 13, 140 ff., 181, 188, 207,
Dzyan, stanzas of, 194.
211, 218, 239.
Christian Science, 31, 32.
Easter, 221.
Christos, The, 148, 287.
Easter Islands, 223.
Cleather, Alice L., 194, 325, 339.
Eckhardt, Meister, 15.
Clement of Alexandria, 14, 189.
Eddy, Mary Baker, 31, 32.
Coleman, W. Emmette, 125 ff., 302.
Eden, 212.
Coleridge, Samuel T., 19, 24.
Edison, Thomas A., 107.
Collins, Mabel, 301 ff.
Edmonds, Judge, 35.
Colville, W. J., 30, 36.
Egg, The mundane, 202, 203, 218.
Comacines, The, 15.
Ego, The, 242 ff., 274, 276, 278, 282,
Comparative Mythology, 3, 145..240
285.
Comparative Religion, 41, 113, 145.
Egypt and Egyptians, 6, 7, 16, 104, 144.
Conception, The Immaculate, 203.
Elder brothers, 5, 147, 183, 258.
Confucius, 25, 29, 112.
Electricity, 204, 205, 207.
Constantine, Emperor, 140.
Elementals, 99, 131, 191, 216, 217.
Copernicus, 5, 16.
Elements, The, 262, 277.
Corson, Prof. Hiram, 115, 122.
Elisha (The Prophet), 130.
Cosmic Cerebrum, Doctrine of, 162.
Elixer of Life, The, 137.
Cosmogenesis, 194, 201 ff.
Elohim, 201.
Coues, Prof. Elliott W., 181, 301 ff.
Emanations, 141.
Coulomb, Madame E., 177, 187.
Emerson, R. W., 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
Creation, 221, 225, 228.
28.
Crookes, Sir William, 36, 262.
Empedocles, 9, 10, 25, 119, 260.
376
Enoch, 213.
Griscom, C. A., Jr., 319, 321.
Enos, 228.
Grosseteste, Robert, 16.
Esoteric section T.S., 184 ff., 194, 295,
Gunas, The, 277.
297, 305, 307, 308, 317, 328.
Guyon, Madame, 20.
Esotericism, 5, 7, 13, 39, 112, 138-140,
148, 152, 184, 196, 267, 281.
Hare, Prof. Robert, 35.
Essenes, 142 ff.
Hargrove, E. T., 314, 321 ff.
Ether, 259 ff.
Harris, Thomas L., 38.
Ethics, of Theosophy, 265 ff., 307.
Harte, Richard, 306.
Eucharist, 142.
Hartmann, Franz, 178, 190.
Eusebius, 119.
Healing, Faith, 18, 21, 22, 23, 39, 132.
Eve, 256.
Heaven, 165 ff., 247 ff.
Everett, Edward, 23.
Hebrews, The, 26.
Evil, problem of, 165.
Hegel, G. W. F., 3.
Evil eye, The, 136.
Heindel, Max, 326.
Evolution, 173, 201, 209, 210, 216, 218,.241
Helix, The, 3.
219, 220, 232, 253 ff.
Helmholtz, 262.
Exotericism, 6, 188.
Heraclitus, 8, 119, 174.
Heresies, 14.
Fall of man, 8, 10, 212.
Hermaphrodites, 225 ff.
Fawcett, E. Douglass, 192.
Hermes Trismegistus, 140, 213, 217.
Felt, George H., 104-106.
Hermeticism, 41, 139.
Fetichism, 158.
Hesiod, 6, 8.
Figulus, Benedictus, 15.
Hilarion, Master, 101.
Fire Philosophers, The, 15.
Hindu philosophy, 27, 31, 32, 39.
Florentine Academy, The, 15, 39.
Hobbes, Thomas, 159.
Fludd, Robert, 39, 119.
Holy Grail, The, 15.
Fohat, 200, 203, 205, 207, 222.
Home, D. D., 36, 37, 93.
Fountain of Youth, 137.
Homer, 6, 126.
Fox, George, 20, 37.
Hotchener, Mrs. Marie R., 331, 334 ff.
Fox, Margaret and Kate, 33.
Houdin, Robert, 36.
Freemasons, The, 41, 255, 335.
Huc, L'Abbι, 195.
Friends, The, 20.
Hume, A. O., 150, 160, 162, 180, 306,
Friends of God, The, 15.
318.
Fullerton, Alexander, 328.
Huxley, Thomas, 126.
Hyperboreans, The, 223.
Gage, Lyman J., 325.
Hypnotism, 18.
Galileo, 16.
Garrett, Edmund, 317.
Iamblichus, 25, 119.
Garrigues, John, 326.
Ignorance, Hall of, 280.
Gebhards, The, 187, 193.
Immortality, 164.
Generation, Fall into, 225, 229.
India, 6, 10, 143, 148, 150, 158, 176 ff.
Genesis, 142, 215, 221.
Initiates, 14.
Genii, 217.
Initiations, 280..242
Globes, Chains of, 205, 207, 213.
Involution, 201, 209.
Glossolalia, 21, 22, 33, 39.
Irenaeus, 119, 142.
Gnosis, The, 2, 15, 42, 141.
Ishvara, 284.
Gnostics, The, 14, 41, 119, 140, 142.
Isis Unveiled, purpose of, 116, 117,
Gower's Confessio Amantis, 15.
127 ff.; mystery of authorship, 114-
Greece, 6, 10, 216.
127; works quoted in, 118, 119; mod-
Greek philosophy, 7, 12, 13, 32.
ern knowledge barren, 130 ff.; ex-
377
position of magic, 132 ff.; magical
Leadbeater, C. W., 297, 311, 320, 349.
phenomena in, 135 ff.; gravitation
Learning, Hall of, 280.
defined, 260; references to, 23, 98,
Leibnitz, G. W., 207.
99, 107, 115-146.
Lemuria, 223 ff., 231, 256, 275, 279.
Islam, 158.
L'Homme de Cuir, 15.
Liberal Catholic Church, The, 327, 335.
James, William, 19.
Light, nature of, 259.
Jehovah, 141, 163, 201, 228.
Lipika, The, 206.
Jelihowsky, Madame, 189, 304 ff.
Lodge, The Aryan, 181.
Jennings, Hargrave, 41.
Logoi, The, 255.
Jesus, 142, 145.
Lully, Raymond, 15.
Jinarajadasa, C., 330, 349.
Joachim of Flores, 15.
Mabinogian Legends, The, 15.
Joan of Arc, 139.
Magi, 6, 16, 144.
John, the Evangelist, 142.
Magic, 39, 98, 114, 130, 131, 132, 133,
Johnston, Charles, 325.
142, 153, 225, 285, 292.
Johnston, Madame Vera, 189, 190, 191.
Magnetism, cosmic, 134 ff., 260, 261.
Josephus, 142.
Mahatma, K.H., 96, 100, 101, 103, 110,
Judaism, 13, 140, 141, 142, 158.
149, 150, 154, 156, 162 ff., 180, 309
Judge, William Q., 85, 104-114, 181,
310, 318.
183, 186, 190, 301 ff., 310 ff.
Mahatma Letters, The, 101, 102, 103,.243
154, 156, 174, 179, 180, 188, 330.
Kabbala, The, 119, 126, 144.
Mahatma Morya, 110, 149, 150, 156,
Kabbalism, 141.
169, 180, 304.
Kabbalists, The, 41, 144, 172.
Mahatmas, 2, 31, 102, 147, 182, 187,
Kant, Emanuel, 168.
189, 268, 306, 313 ff., 321 ff.
Kapila, 213.
Mahayana, 313.
Karma, 8, 27, 182, 197, 200, 232 ff.,
Maitreya, Lord, 218.
249 ff., 256, 274, 275, 280, 289, 290.
Manas (Mind), 168, 213, 222, 230,
Karma, Lords of, 244.
246, 256.
Keightley, Dr. Archibald, 122, 181, 187,
Manichaeism, 14.
191, 192, 194, 339.
Manu, Laws of, 144.
Keightley, Bertram, 122, 187, 191, 194,
Manvantara, 198, 216, 221, 261.
339.
Marden, Orison S., 31.
Kepler, 16, 260.
Mars, 230, 310.
Kiddle Incident, The, 157.
Masonry, 108, 109.
Kingsford, Anna B., 174.
Massey, C. C., 105, 176.
Kingsland, William, 43, 179.
Masters, The, 147, 150 ff., 169, 176,
Koumboum, magical tree, 136.
179, 182, 187, 188, 191, 266, 272, 305,
Krishna, 145, 213, 280, 282, 290.
310 ff.
Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 333 ff., 338, 349.
Materialism, 159, 160 ff., 258 ff., 261,
Kriyasakti, 228, 256.
264.
Krotona, (California), 337.
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, 192.
Kumaras, 222, 225, 228, 230.
Maya, 27, 159, 164, 218.
Kundalini, The, 285.
Mazoomdar, P. C., 31.
Mead, G. R. S., 325, 339.
"Lamasery, The," 59.
Meaning, significance of, 235 ff.
Land, The Imperishable Sacred, 223.
Mercury, 230, 310.
Lao-Tze, 145.
Mesmerism, 18, 19, 29, 30, 31, 39, 132.
Larson, C. D., 31..244
Metachemistry, 263.
Latter Day Saints, 22.
Methodism, 20.
378
Millikan, Prof. Robert A., 207.
Ormazd, 163.
Milton, John, 266.
Orpheus, 213.
Mind-Born, The, 226.
Orphism, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
Mindless, Sin of the, 256.
Osiris, 163.
Miracle Club, The, 104.
Oversoul, The, 27, 200.
Mirandola, Pico della, 119.
Owen, Robert Dale, 21, 34, 36.
Missionaries, Christian, 178, 179, 187.
Mitchell, Roy F., 330.
Pagan gods, 139.
Moira, 8, 10.
Paganism vindicated, 138 ff., 141.
Monad, The, 207, 210, 211, 218, 221,
Paladino, Eusapia, 36.
222, 227, 332, 242, 273, 280.
Pancoast, Dr. Seth, 104.
Monism, 160, 161.
Paracelsus, 15, 39, 119, 122, 126, 263.
Moon, The, 210, 213, 218, 226 ff.
Paradise, 212.
Morality, Theosophic, 113, 114.
Parker, Theodore, 23, 35.
More, Henry, 119.
Parkman, Francis, 23.
Mormons, The, 22, 51.
Parmenides, 9, 119.
Moses, 141.
Patanjali, 273, 286.
Moses, W. Stainton, 176.
Paterenes, The, 15.
Mόller, Max, 127, 169, 195.
Patristics, 15, 119, 126, 141, 142.
Myers, F. W. H., 36, 176, 180.
Patterson, Charles Brodie, 30.
Mystery Religions, The, 2, 7, 8, 11, 13,
Paulicians, The, 15.
14, 41, 140, 141, 155, 189.
Peebles, J. M., 36.
Mysticism, 39.
Pennsylvania Theosophy, 41.
Mythology, 140, 143.
Percival, Harold W., 325.
Peredur stories, 15.
Nazarenes, The, 142.
Perpetual motion, 137.
Necromancy, 39..245
Persia, 6, 7, 8.
Neo-Platonism, 12, 25, 41, 119, 126,
Philalethians, 140.
140, 141.
Philo Judaeus, 13, 42, 119, 144.
Neo-Theosophy, 175, 327, 328 ff.
Philosopher's Stone, The, 137, 172.
Nettesheim, Agrippa von, 16, 39, 119.
Phaedrus, The, II.
New Thought, 29, 30, 31.
Phoenix, The (Journal), 173.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 16, 134, 170, 260.
Physis, 7.
Nicholas of Basle, 15.
Pietism, German, 15.
Nirmanakayas, 271, 312.
Pindar, 6, 9.
Nirvana, 186, 215, 251 ff., 312.
Piper, Mrs. Leonora, 36.
Noah, 189.
Pitris, 144, 201, 209, 222, 229.
Noumenon, 260.
Planetary spirits, 174, 205, 206, 213.
Numenius, 14.
Plato, 5, 9, 10, 11, 119, 138, 144, 157,
Numerology, 213.
224, 242.
Nyana, 283.
Pletho, Gemistus, 15, 119.
Pliny, 126, 142.
Occultism, 39, 199, 218.
Plotinus, 12, 14, 25, 119.
Olcott, Col. Henry S., 35, 56, 57, 58, 59,
Plutarch, 119.
77, 78, 79, 84, 85, 90, 94, 98, 103, 105-
Popul Vuh, The, 119.
114, 119, 120, 122, 176, 183, 305 ff.,
Porphyry, 14, 119.
310 ff., 328 ff.
Poseidonis, 224.
Old, W. R., 317.
Prakriti, 161.
Oriental philosophy, 113.
Pralaya, 164, 198, 201, 225, 231.
Origen, 12, 14, 189.
Prana, 284.
Original Sin, 9.
Pranayama, 284.
379
Pratt, Orson, 22.
Saviors, 255.
Pratyahara, 284.
Science, 199, 253 ff.
Prayag Letter, The, 318.
Secret Doctrine, The, 116, 162, 188 ff.
Precipitation of writing, 156 ff..246
194 ff., 253 ff., 308.
Probation, Path of, 280, 283.
Serapis, 14.
Probationers, Pledge of, 185.
Sermon on the Mount, The, 142.
Proclus, 12, 14, 119.
Serpent, Symbol, The, 203, 212, 226.
Prodigies, mathematical, 18.
Seth, 228.
Prometheus, 228.
Sevens, 206, 214, 218, 219.
Protyle, 202, 262.
Seybert Commission on Spiritualism, 35.
Psychic experiences, 14, 62-88.
Shakers, The, 21.
Puranas, The, 263.
Shells, astral, 222, 229, 255.
Purusha, 161.
Siddhis, The, 286.
Pythagoreanism, 7, 9, 10, 11, 25, 119,
Sinnett, Albert P., 43, 80-84, 94, 96,
140, 144.
100, 150, 151, 154 ff., 176 ff., 183,
306, 310 ff., 329, 349.
Quakers, The, 20.
Slate writing, 33.
Quimby, P. P., 19, 30, 31.
Smith, Joseph, 22.
Quincy, Josiah, 23.
Smith, Wayland, 15.
Smythe, Albert, 330.
Races, Root- and Sub-, 209, 210, 222 ff.
Society for Psychical Research, 176 ff.,
Racowitza, Princess Helene von, 60.
186, 187.
Rakowczi, Count, 15.
Socrates, 8, 10, 169.
Reincarnation, 7, 8, 11, 15, 26, 38, 157,
Solomon's Seal, significance of, 172.
197, 232 ff., 290.
Solovyoff, V. S., 43, 85, 86, 180, 304 ff.
Religion, deterioration of, 3, 4, 158.
Sorcery, 225, 266, 282.
Reproduction, 226 ff.
Spalding, A. G., 324.
Revivals, American religious, 18.
Spencer, Herbert, 127.
Richmond, Cora V., 36.
Spiritualism, 21, 33-38, 62, 64, 72, 84,
Rishis, 6, 150, 189.
89-102, 166, 169, 181, 246, 265, 315.
Robins, Dr. William L., 336.
St. Germain, Count, 15.
Rochester Theosophical Society, 181.
St. Paul, 14, 140..247
Rogers, L. W., 337, 349.
Stead, W. T., 192, 307.
Romance of the Rose, The, 15.
Suicides, 167.
Romanes, J. G., 192.
Sun, The New York, 261.
Romanticism, German, 24.
Supermen, 4, 150 ff., 241.
Rosicrucians, The, 15, 41, 139, 326.
Supernaturalism, 19, 20.
Rounds, Cosmical, 206, 209, 210, 214,
Superstitions, 40, 158 ff.
216, 220, 222.
Suso (The Mystic), 15.
Row, T. Subba, 310.
Swamis, 31.
Roy, Rammohun, 24.
Sweat-Born, The, 226.
Rusalky, (Water Sprites), 45.
Swedenborgianism, 19, 20, 37, 119, 263.
Ruskin, John, 292.
Symbolism, 217 ff.
Syncretism of Theosophy, 13.
Sabbath, The, 215.
Saccas, Ammonius, 12, 14, 119.
Tarot of the Bohemians, 15, 119.
Saltus, Edgar, 192.
Tauler, John, 15.
Samadhi, 284.
Teleology, 217, 236.
Samuel (The Prophet), 130.
Tertullian, 119.
Satan, 39, 212, 213, 218.
Thales, 6, 7, 119.
Satyrs, 256.
Thaumaturgy, 39.
380
Theurgy, 39, 142, 143.
Wachtmeister, Countess Constance, 43,
Thoreau, Henry, 28.
86, 87, 122, 187, 188, 190, 193.
Tibet, 148, 150.
Wadia, P. B., 326.
Tingley, Katherine, 320 ff.
Waldenses, The, 15.
Titans, The, 228 ff.
Warrington, Albert P., 337.
Tolerance, 295, 299.
Wedgewood, Bishop James I., 327, 335,
Transcendentalism, 24, 31.
349.
Traubel, Horace L., 29.
Wheel of Life, The, 8, 9, 26, 164.
Triangles, The Interlaced, 172.
Whitman, Walt, 28, 29..248
Trinity, Doctrine of, 22, 23, 142.
Wilder, Dr. Alexander, 115, 119, 122.
Troubadours, The, 15.
Wisdom, The Ancient, 2-6.
Tyndall, 127.
Wisdom, Hall of, 280.
Witchcraft, 39.
Unitarianism, 23, 24, 31, 32.
Wordsworth, William, 24.
Wright, Claude F., 321 ff.
Vampirism, 136, 167.
Writing, automatic, 33.
Van Helmont, 119.
Van Hook, Dr. Weller, 337.
Xenophanes, 25.
Vaughn, Thomas, 39.
Vedanta Society, The, 31.
Yama, 283.
Vedantism, 110.
Yoga, Bhakti, 275; Hatha, 275; Karma,
Vedas, The, 25, 29, 119, 197, 263.
274 ff., 294, 348; Laya, 275; Raja, 275;
Vegetarianism, 170.
philosophy of, 39, 249, 256, 272 ff.
Venus (planet), 230, 254.
Yogis, 31, 285 ff.
Virgil, 126.
Virgin Birth, 212.
Zeno, 9.
Vivekananda, Swami, 31.
Zeus, 228 ff.
Voodooism, 51.
Zoroaster, 25, 29, 113, 144.
381
Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House